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lis edition contains a Map of Florida revised for 1890. 



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RUINS OV THE CITY GATEWAY. 



The Standard Guide 



ST. AUGUSTINE 



By CHARLES B. REYNOLDS 



ILLUSTRATED 




iP/RIGHT" ^p 

i FEB 151890.;/) 

lS^^lNSTO , *• 



ST. AUGUSTINE, FLORIDA 
E. H. REYNOLDS 

Copyright, iSgo, ey E. H. Reynolds 




TO THE READER. 



THE STANDARD GUIDE is intended to give such 
practical information and intelligent descriptions as 
it is hoped may add to the convenience and pleasure of the 
tourist in St. Augustine. 

The present edition appears in an enlarged form, with 
text revised to date, and much new material, including a 
description of the Hotel Ponce cle Leon. The generous 
list of illustrations given in former editions has also been 
enlarged. 

If this little book be not cast aside, its prose and pic- 
tures may in the future prove pleasant reminders of a visit 
to St. Auo-ustine. 



f 3 \» 

v. 







CONTENTS.. 



LA/ 



St. Augustine, - 

Hotel Ponce de Leon, 

The City Gateway, 

The Plaza, - 

Fort Marion, - . - 

The Sea-Wall, 

St. Francis Barracks, - 

Harbor and Beach, 

St. Anastasia Island, - 

As a Health Resort, 

Florae Calendar, 

Gun and Rod, 

Lawn Tennis Tournament, 



Page 

' 9 

-5 

- 44 
47 

- 53 
68 



76 

»3 

86 
88 
92 



71V the realm of flowers, a perfumed land, 
Girt by the sea. by soft winds fanned; 
Ravaged by "car in years grown old, 
Its former glory a tale long told, 

Stands the quaint old Spanish city. 

The scene of many a hard-fought fight, 
Of many a siege, when Spanish might 
Was o'er the land : in its decay 
It hath a beauty to live a/wax, 

That quaint old Spanish city. 

Poems of Places. 




ILLUSTRATIONS. 



The City Gateway, 

St. George Street, 

Charlotte Street, - 

A Study in St. Augustine, 

St. Francis Street, 

Ruins of the King's Forge, 

Garden Overlooking Plaza, 

The Magnolia Hotel, - 

The Plaza Basin, - 

A Woman of the Balearic Islands, 

St. George Street, Near the Plaza, 

In the Old Days, 

The Villa Zorayda, 

Grace Church, 

Hotel Ponce de Leon, from the Northwest, 

Hotel Ponce de Leon, from the Alameda, 

Hotel Ponce de Leon, Portico and Entrance, 

Hotel Ponce de Leon, Fountain Court, 

Hotel Ponce de Leon, Grand Entrance, 

Hotel Ponce de Leon, Ladies' Entrance, 

Hotel Ponce de Leon, Roof Terrace, 

Ruins of Gateway, from Without, 



Frontispie 



23 
27 
29 
3i 
33 
35 
37 
41 
45 



viii Illustrations. 

Page 

Ruins ok Gateway, from the Northwest, - - 46 

The Old Plaza Market, - - , 4S 

Plaza Monument Inscription, - - - 4') 

The Plaza, - - ... go 
The Cathedral, - - ..... 51 

Fort Marion, from the Water Battery, ----- 52 

Fort Marion, Plan, - ----- 54 

Fort Marion, Spanish Coat of Arms. - - - 55 

Fort Marion, Inclined Plane, - ... - 56 

Fort Marion, Niche in Chapel, _..-.. 5S 

Fori Marion, .V Casemate Door, .... 5 g 

Fort .Marion, Sally-Port and Watch Tower, - 60 

Fort Marion, Osceola, - - - 61 

Fort Marion, Coacoochee, - 61 

Fort Marion, Outline, - • 62 

Fort Marion, Bastions and Bridge to Barracan, - 63 

Fort Marion, Northeast Tower, - 64 

Fort Marion, Southeast Tower, - 65 

Fort Marion, General Marion, - - - - - 66 

Fort Marion, Cannon on Northwest Glacis, - - 67 

Fort Marion, from the North, - 73 

Treasury Street, - - 6g 

St. Francis Barracks, - - - - 71 

Dade's Monument, - - - -.71 

The French at the River of Dolphins, - - - 74 

Plan of Harbor and Beaches, - 75 
The Old Lighthouse, - ----- 77 

St. Augustine Light, - 78 

Francis Drake, - - - - 79 

Shore of St. Anastasia Island, - So 

Ruins of the Matanzas Fort, - S2 

St. George Street, - - - - - - 84 

Florida House, - 85 

Blossom of the Banana, - - - - S7 

Indian Mode of Hunting Alligators, - . . go 

The Sea Bass, - - - - - 91 

*** There are four folders with illustrations of the Hotels Ponce de Leon. Alcazar and Cordova. 
and the Memorial Presbyterian Church. 



ST. AUGUSTINE. 




;ORTIFICATION and defense were the first thought of 
the Spanish soldiers who founded St. Augustine; and 
they were careful to choose a site which should be a 
stronghold. The situation of the town was admirably 
fitted for such a purpose. St. Augustine is built on a 
narrow strip of land running north and south. In 
front on the east is the Matanzas River, in the rear on 
the west flows the St. Sebastian. 
Distances in St. Augustine are not great. The chief points of interest are com- 
prised within an area of three-quarters of a mile in length; and the tourist who is 
provided with the Standard Guide will need no other aid in finding his way. 

A sea-wall extends along the water front from Fort Marion on the north to the 
United States barracks on the south. In the center of the town is an open square or 
park, called the Plaza. 

The principal streets run north and south; the cross streets at right angles, east 
and west. The main thoroughfare, St. George street, runs through the center of the 
town to the City Gate; from that point it is known as the Shell Road, extending north 
beyond the San Marco Hotel. Treasury street, crossing St. George one block north 
of the Plaza, narrows at the east end to an alley, across which two persons may clasp 
hands. St. Francis street, at the southern extremity of St. George, was long famous 
for its ancient date palm, which was killed by the freeze of 1885. The Alameda 
extends west from the Plaza to the St. Sebastian River. 



Some of the street names are suggestive of incidents in the town's romantic history. St. Francis 
commemorates the labors and self sacrifice of the Franciscan mission fathers, whose monastic institu- 
tion was on the site where the barracks now stand. Cuna and St. Hypolita were given in the Spanish 
supremacy. St. George street was so called in honor of England's patron saint, and Charlotte was the 
name of the queen of King George III. Old St. A ugustine states that the name Treasury is from 
the Spanish term, which signified "the street where the treasurer lives." The treasure (/. c, funds for 
the soldiers' pay, etc.) was kept closely guarded in the fort. 

The narrow little streets, with their foreign names and foreign faces, their 
overhanging balconies and high garden walls, through whose open door one caught 



IO 



The Standard Guide. 



a glimpse of orange and fig and waving banana, were once among the quaint char- 
acteristics which made this old Florida town charming and peculiar among all Amer- 
ican cities. But the picturesque streets, of which tourists delighted to write, have 
almost ceased to be a pleasing feature of St. Augustine. Some of them have been 




ST. GEORGE STREET. 



widened; and others, shorn of their quaintness, are ill adapted to the swelling traffic 
of the " rush season." Reckless drivers crowd the pedestrian to the wall, and well 
may he sigh for the good old times when tradition says no wheeled vehicle was 
allowed in St. Augustine. 

The aspect of the town has been modified in other respects. The style of archi- 
tecture is undergoing a change; one by one the overhanging balconies are disappear- 
ing from the streets; high stone walls are replaced by picket fences and wire netting; 




■' 






-HART.OTTE STREET 



The Standard Guide 




A STUDY IN ST. AUGCSTTNE. 
Sketch from paintings by Louis C. Tiffany. 

moss-roofed houses have given way to smart shops; lattice gates are displaced by 
show windows and displays of bargains in ready-made clothing. 

Few of the old dwellings are remarkable for antiquity or peculiarity of construc- 
tion; their picturesque side is usually seen from the street. In former times most of 
the houses were of coquina, a natural shellstone quarried from Anastasia Island, but 
this has been superseded by wood and artificial concrete. 

To tear down and demolish has been the rule with foe and friend alike. Indian. Sea-King, Bou- 
canier, British invader — each in turn has scourged the town; and after the passing of each, it has risen 
again. If we may credit the testimony of visitors here, over St. Augustine has always hung an air of 
desolation and decay. After the successive changes of rulers, the new has always been built from the 
old. To use the coquina blocks from a dilapidated structure was less laborious than to hew out new 
material from the Anastasia quarries. In this manner were destroyed the coquina batteries, that in 
old times defended the southern line of the town. The stone from one of them was employed in build- 



w>\ 







H 



The Standard Guide. 



ing the Franciscan convent, and thence it went into the foundation of the barracks, which rose on the 
convent site. Another lot of coquina passed through a like cycle of usefulness, from outskirt battery 
into parish church, and from parish church to the repair of the city gate. So universal, indeed, has 
been this process of tearing down the old to construct the new, that there are few edifices here to-day, 
concerning whose antiquity we have satisfactory evidence. Boston worships in churches more ancient 
than the cathedral; New Orleans markets are older than the disused one on the plaza; Salem wharves 




}F THE KINC 



antedate the sea-wall; on the banks of the Connecticut, the Hudson and the Potomac stand dwellings 
more venerable than any here on the Matanzas. — Old St. Augustine, Later Years. 

The people met in the streets are not the picturesque beings described in the 
books of travel written fifty years ago. Most tourists expect to find here a Spanish 
population. They have a notion — zealously fostered by the stereotyped " Ancient 
City " letter in Northern newspapers — that inasmuch as St. Augustine was founded 
by the Spaniards there must be Spaniards here now. As a matter of fact, the swarthy 
Spaniard stalks through the streets no longer, save in the mushy imagination of femi- 



The Standard Guide. 



17 



nine correspondents, who send gushing screeds to newspapers. The Spanish resi- 
dents emigrated when Florida was ceded to the United States seventy-five years ago. 
Lady Duffus Hardy professed to have found here in 1879 an "old Spaniard in his 
eighty-second year," who, she affirms, told her, " Yes, I've seen the British flag flying 
from the old fort, the Spanish banner flying; now we are under the eagle's wing, and 
the stars and stripes are fluttering over us." As the British flag ceased to "fly from 
the old fort" in 17S3, or fifteen years before Lady Hardy's wonderful "old Spaniard" 
was born, he must have beheld the Cross of St. George in some former state of being. 
A portion of the native population, distinguished by dark eyes and dark com- 




PLAZA BASIN'. 



plexions, is composed of the Minorcans, but they are now an inconspicuous part of 
the winter throngs. They have given place to the multitudes from abroad; as their 
ancient coquina houses are making way for modern hotels and winter residences. 

In 1769, during the British occupation, a colony of Minorcans and Majorcans 
were brought from the Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean Sea to New Smyrna, on 
the Indian River, south of St. Augustine. Deceived by Turnbull, the proprietor of 
the plantation, and subjected to gross privation and cruelty, the Minorcans at length 
appealed to the authorities of St. Augustine, were promised protection, deserted from 
New Smyrna in a body, came to St. Augustine, were defended against the claims of 
Turnbull, received an allotment of land in the town, built palmetto-thatched cottages, 
and remained here after the English emigrated. 



1 8 The Standard Guide. 

The pathetic story of the Minorcans at New Smyrna and their exodus to St. 
Augustine has enlisted the sympathetic pen of more than one narrator. There is 
little reason for questioning the truth of the commonly accepted version, yet it is due 
to Dr. Turnbull to remember that this story, like every other, has two sides. Turn- 
bull's side is given by his personal friend Dr. Johnson of Charleston, S. C, in his 
Reminiscences of the American Revolution. According to this authority the New 
Smyrna revolt was instigated by the British Governor's wife, in St. Augustine, who 
had been an old flame of Turnbull's in Scotland, and was impelled to her mischief- 
making among his indentured colonists by a motive no less powerful than the fury of a 
woman scorned. Most travelers have spoken kindly of the Minorcans in St. Augustine, 
from Latrobe in 1832, who gives a pretty picture of the fishermen's cottages, festooned 
with nets and roses, shaded by orange trees and hung round with cages of nonpar- 
eils and mockingbirds, to William Cullen Bryant in 1843, who described them as "a 
mild, harmless race, of civil manners and abstemious habits." Five years later, Rev. 
R. K. Sewall, then the rector of Trinity Church, published his Sketches of St. 
Augustine. Should you ever come upon a copy of this book, it will almost certainly 
be found that pages 39 and 40 are wanting; and inspection will show that the leaf 
has been cut out. The missing pages contained this reference to the Minorcans: 

The present race were of servile extraction. By the duplicity of one Turnbull they were seduced 
from their homes in the Mediterranean and located at Smyrna, and forced to till the lands of the pro- 
prietors who had brought them into Florida for that purpose. After enduring great privation, toil and 
suffering, under the most trying circumstances of a servile state, they revolted in a body, regained their 
rights and maintained them. * * * Their women are distinguished for their taste, neatness and 
industry, a peculiar light olive shade of complexion, and a dark full eye. The males are less favored 
by nature and habit. They lack enterprise. Most of them are without education. Their canoes, 
fishing lines and hunting guns are their main source of subsistence. The rising generation is, however, 
in a state of rapid transition. — R. K. Sewall, "Sketches of St. Augustine," pp. 39-40. 

However big or little may have been the grains of truth in this description, the 
Minorcans had at least education enough to comprehend the uncomplimentary tone 
of Mr. Sewall's allusion to them; and when the edition of Sketches came to hand they 
showed their enterprise by mobbing the store where the books were, bent on the 
destruction of the whole lot. They were only restrained by a pledge, faithfully kept, 
that the obnoxious pages should be torn from every book. 

Among the customs of the native land retained to a recent period by the 
Minorcans was the singing of a hymn in honor of the Virgin, by groups of young 
men who went about the streets serenading their friends, on the evening before 
Easter. This hymn, called the Fromajardis, was in the Mahonese dialect. It was 
handed down orally from one generation to another, and with what fidelity to the 
original may be inferred from this incident of Dr. Anderson's visit to Minorca in the 
summer of 1888, as related in a letter: 

At sundown we stopped at a small village, which was as clean as a new pin, every house whitened 
to the last degree, and had a lunch of bread, cheese, oranges, cherries, and native wine — all the house 
afforded. As we rode along through the hills by the light of the pale new moon, f sang to the driver the 
" Fromajardis," as sung in St. Augustine. He seemed pleased and surprised, and said that he did not 
know that any foreign gentleman knew that song, I told the interpreter to tell him that over a hundred 



The Standard Guide. 



19 



?y# C>, 



, f ¥ 




A WOMAN OF THE BALEARIC ISLANDS. 
By Gustave Dord. 



The Standard Guide. 




ST. GEORGE STREET NEAR THE PLAZA. 
From ait old Photograph. 



years ago that song was carried over the ocean, and now I brought it back among its native hills. He 
said it was not sung as much now as it was twenty years ago. Thus are old customs dying. 

Song has wonderful vitality, and melody lives. The airs of French psalms sung 
by the Huguenots in Florida were heard among the Indians long after the death of 
Ribault at Matanzas. In odd, if not instructive, contrast to this is the curious testi- 
mony of Jonathan Dickenson, shipwrecked on this coast in 1696, who records that 
he was hailed with expressions of vulgarity in the English tongue by the Indians, 
or as he calls them, "the inhuman cannibals of Florida." 

The new concrete building material is a composition of sand, Portland cement 
and shells. The shells are found in deposits of vast extent on Anastasia Island, 
opposite the town. They lie loose in masses several feet deep, and under certain 
conditions the layers solidify and form the natural shell-stone or limestone, called 
coquina, described in a later chapter on St. Anastasia Island. The loose shell is 
brought over in carloads to the building site, and is mixed in given proportions with 
the sand and cement. While still soft the composition is poured into moulds and 
hardens. A wall is built by first setting boards up on edge, with a space between 
equal to the depth of the wall; into this space is poured a layer of concrete; as each 
layer hardens a new one is poured in on top of it, and successive layers are added to 
any required height. The wall is thus cast instead of being built; when completed it 
is one stone; indeed, the entire wall construction of a concrete building is one solid 
mass thoroughout — a monolith, with neither joint nor seam. The plastic material 



The Standard Guide. 



&?Att&u$tin 

anlifi Harbour 



<t The Cavda 

£. rRPAtJi Tema" 
t. 4. Stone. ^^ 
f. XndLaM-Chmvh 



trw -tfhc 
iSu/. 



OneXAiiU 




IN THE OLD DAYS. 

lends itself most admirably to architectural and decorative purposes, and possesses 
the very important qualities of durability and immunity from destruction by fire. 

This concrete was first employed by Mr. Franklin W. Smith, of Boston, Mass., in 
the construction of his unique winter residence, the Villa Zorayda, which is on the 
Alameda, opposite the Hotel Ponce de Leon. Mr. Smith yet preserves as an archae- 
ological treasure the original, experimental block of concrete, which figuratively is 
the corner stone of modern stone-built St. Augustine, for it was the successful use of 
this material, as demonstrated in the building of the Villa Zorayda, that made pos- 
sible the structures which have followed. 

The Villa Zorayda is worthy of note because of its architectural design and the 
elaborate manner in which its owner-architect has successfully developed his plan of 
an oriental building as appropriate to the latitude of Florida— the conception having 
been borrowed from the universal practice of Eastern countries, demonstrating the 
experience of centuries. The architecture throughout is strictly Moorish, after 
sketches and photographs in Spain, Tangiers and Algiers. Like the Alhambra itself, 
the Zorayda is of massive concrete. The walls have the external appearance of 
granite, with all of its durability. Above the front entrance is the inscription in 
Arabic 'letters: Wa la ghalib ilia //a—" There is no conqueror but God." This is the 
motto everywhere reproduced on the escutcheons and in the tracery of the Alhambra. 

Mahamad Aben Alahmar, the founder of the Alhambra, having participated with King Ferdinand 
in the conquest of Seville, returned to his dominions. "When the conqueror approached his beloved 
Granada, the people thronged forth to see him with impatient joy, for they loved him as a benefactor. 
They had erected arches of triumph in honor of his martial exploits, and wherever he passed he was 
hailed with acclamations, as El Ghalib, or The Conqueror. Mahamad shook his head when he heard the 



The Standard Guide. 




THE ZORAYDA. 



appellation. ' Wa Icighalib ilia lla' exclaimed he," There is no conqueror but God!" From that time 
forward, he adopted this exclamation as a motto. He inscribed it on an oblique band across his 
escutcheon, and it continued to be the motto of his descendants." — Irving, " The Alhambra." 

Within the walls of the Zorayda is a central court, paved with tiles made for it in 
Spain, and surrounded by a double gallery supported on thirty-six horseshoe arches. 
The walls of the vestibule, court and drawing-room are covered with the moresque 
tracery of the Alhambra, the models having been imported for the purpose. In this 
detail of construction and ornamentation the Zorayda is the first example in the 
United States. The interior finish, furniture and ornaments richly illustrate the 
beauties of Moorish colors and forms, and the pleasing effect is heightened by the 
tropical foliage and fruits in the protected court. 

Four agencies have contributed to the rapid development of the city as a winter 
resort. First — Improved transportation facilities, providing easy access from the 
North. The railway time from New York has been reduced to thirty-six hours, through 
from New York to St. Augustine without change. Second — The discovery of an 
artesian water supply. The wells have a constant flow sufficient for every domestic 
and public purpose; and the abundant water has had its part in beautifying the town. 
Third — The adoption of a concrete building material, which means substantial and 
absolutely fire-proof buildings. Fourth — The lavish expenditure of princely capital 
in the construction of magnificent hotels for the entertainment of thousands of guests. 






^^^ 




24 The Standard Guide. 

Each of these agencies has had its share in the making of St. Augustine ; with an}' 
one of them wanting, the results attained would not have been achieved. 

What with the destructive work of fires, the filling in of creeks and marshes, the 
opening of new streets, and the expansion of the town north and west and south, old 
visitors find themselves strangely at a loss to identify localities. The St. Augustine 
Hotel and entire blocks on the north and south sides of the Plaza have been de- 
stroyed and replaced by new buildings. Where boats once sailed and marsh hens 
clattered on the Maria Sanchez Creek, now stands the Alcazar; and across the street, 
where half a dozen years ago a sign stuck in the mud forbade shooting, is one wing 
of the Hotel Ponce de Leon; the site of the new railroad depot is on reclaimed land 
once a marsh. All these new extensions have been laid out only after well-matured 
plans; none of them have been dominated by the niggardly notions which narrowed 
the lanes in old times. 

The aspect of St. George street has been happily changed throughout almost its 
entire length. Nowhere is the improvement more marked than in the vicinity of the 
Magnolia Hotel, which, from a plain building devoid of architectural merits, has been 
remodeled and converted into the attractive Queen Anne shown on page 16. Just 
north of the Magnolia, the familiar site, which has been occupied for twenty-five 
years by the Presbyterian parsonage, has been selected for the new municipal offices. 
When the present post office building — originally the old Spanish Governor's house 
— shall have been demolished and its grounds added to the Plaza, St. Augustine will 
have a public park of which her citizens may be justly proud. 

Pleasing changes have been made in church architecture. The Cathedral has 
been burned, rebuilt, enlarged and beautified; Grace Church, the Methodist Epis- 
copal edifice, of wood, has been replaced by a stone church and parsonage, beautiful 
in design, planned by Messrs. Carrere and Hastings, and presented to the society by 
Mr. Henry M. Flagler. The new Presbyterian church is referred to on another page. 

So in one way and another the town has taken on a new appearance and char- 
acter. From a queerly built old city, whos2 foreign air piqued the curiosity of the 
chance visitor, and hinted at the strange vicissitudes of its " three centuries of battle 
and change," St. Augustine has become a fashionable winter resort, whose great 
hotels dominate the aspect of the surroundings, and in their luxury and magnificence 
have no equals in the world; it is the winter Newport, whose visitors are numbered 
by tens of thousands, whose private residences are in a growing degree distinguished 
for elegance and comfort. Year by year the city grows more beautiful, and with each 
innovation and transformation adds anew to its attractiveness. The old has been 
supplanted by the new, yet St. Augustine preserves a distinctive character all its own, 
and there is now more than ever before about the old city an indefinable charm which 
leads one's thoughts back to it again, and gladdens the face that is once more turned 
toward Florida and St. Augustine. 

Can life anywhere else be like life in the Ancient City? Upon the first day thereof we are ready to 
swear you, Nay. Upon the one hundred and fifty-first I think we say, Amen. — Elizabeth Stuart Phelps. 




I 



mm 






tESBYTKRIAN CHU 
if Guide to St. Augustine. 



THE HOTEL PONCE DE LEON. 




HAS ever been the fashion in describing St. Augustine to lay 
emphasis on the Spanish character of the town. With the one 
exception of the fort, however, no specially notable example of 
Spanish architecture was to be found here. The streets were 
as narrow and irregular as those of Toledo, and the houses were 
small and bare. The Spanish Governor's residence, the Fran- 
ciscan convent and the cathedral have been made much of; but 
they owed their distinction to greater size, rather than to any 
beauty of design or adornment, to set them apart from the pre- 
vailing style of buildings, whose severity of type they followed. 
Though the town was during successive reigns the most important holding of Spain 
in North America, the Governor's residence reflected none of the magnificence of the 
Royal Palace of Madrid. The convent had nothing suggestive of the richly endowed 
monastic institutions in Spain, as, for instance, that of San Agustin, renowned for its 
Murillos and its superb memorials of the Ponce de Leon family. The cathedral had 
no nave like that of Santa Maria the pride of Leon, no windows of glass painted by a 
Holanda, no railings carved by an Andino, nor plate wrought by a Vandolino. Florida 
yielded to Spanish gold seekers no treasure for the building of massive cathedrals like 
that founded by Cortez on the site of the Temple of the Montezumas in Mexico. 
Throughout the entire period of its rule from Madrid, the town appears to have 
been always poor, as the Boucaniers found it in the middle of the seventeenth 
century. There are no records of any former architectural magnificence. 

And yet no natural conditions were wanting. The sky above St. Augustine 
arches as delicately blue and soft as that of Seville; the sunlight here is as warm and 
as golden as that which floods the patios of Spanish Alcazars; the Florida heavens 
are as radiantly brilliant by night and the full moon floats as luminous above the 
southern Atlantic coast as where the pinnacles and minarets of Valencia glitter in its 
beams on the Mediterranean shore. Add to these natural adaptations the historic 
associations, all of which were of Spain and the Spaniards, and there is little room 
for wonder that when strangers came here they looked for some architectural monu- 
ments, other than gloomy fortifications, to commemorate the dignity and pride of the 
ancient Spanish rule. Position, climate, history — here were the possibilities. They 
waited only an appreciative recognition, to which should be added the purpose and 
the means to prove them. In due time that recognition came. 



26 The Standard Guide. 

Among those who as tourists found their way to St. Augustine, not many winters 
ago, was Mr. Henry M. Flagler of New York. He recognized the possibilities of the 
place, and happily resolved to make them good. His scheme for doing this was 
generous and far-reaching. It provided for nothing less than the building of a 
palace, with towers, courts, fountains, loggias and cool retreats, to be set amid 
appropriate surroundings, in design to embody the beauties of Spanish architecture, 
with decoration suggestive of the history of Florida and St. Augustine, and every 
detail of construction, adornment and appointment befitting its position here in the 
city, whose patent had come three centuries ago from the sovereign of the proudest 
dominion on the globe. The projected structure was not to have the seclusion of a 
private home, but as a hotel it should give greater impress to the town. Built within 
sound of the surf on the Florida shore first sighted by Ponce de Leon, and with 
towers overlooking the sea, it should be called in honor of that redoubtable knight 
and discoverer, whose romantic quest made his name typical of the adventurous and 
chimerical spirit of his age. And as the bastions and watchtowers of Fort Marion 
were significant of the military prowess of the sixteenth-century Spain — the Spain 
of Philip II. and Menendez, so this new structure, the Hotel Ponce de Leon, should 
in the beauty and harmony of its parts, furnish a token of that other Spain, the 
mother of artists and architects and cunning craftsmen. A beautiful dream this; 
and one, perhaps, not undreamt before; but if it had come to others, it was only 
as the baseless fabric of a castle in the air, whose lovely vision had flushed in the 
rosy light of imagination and then dissolved into unreality, as the glory of the 
Southern sunset so quickly merges into night. It was the happy fortune of this 
dreamer to transform the shadowy pleasure-dome of fancy into substantial, concrete 
reality. 

The architects to whom the scheme was imparted and the execution of it 
intrusted, caught its spirit and entered upon their task with the enthusiasm born of 
a ready sympathy. The style most appropriate was manifestly to be sought in the 
architecture of Spain, and must be Spanish, not Moorish. For between the Spaniards 
and the Moors in Spain burned the race feuds of centuries, and Spanish architects 
abhorred Moorish forms. If then its spirit and purpose were to be carried out, the 
Hotel Ponce de Leon must not share the " plaster glories " of the Alhambra, its 
models must embody creations distinctively Spanish. Selection was made of the 
Spanish Renaissance, and this was well chosen, for it was that style whose development 
coincided with the most glorious period of Spanish history. It was in the ever 
memorable age when the Moors had been expelled from Granada and all Spain was 
united under Ferdinand and Isabel, when Spanish explorers were conquering 
America, into the treasury of Spain was flowing the wealth of the Indies, and the 
empire was at the zenith of opulence and power — that Spanish architecture found its 
highest expression in Renaissance forms. It was in the epoch-making years when 
Columbus gave to Ferdinand and Isabel a new world, that Diego de Siloe planned 
the Cathedral of Granada, in whose magnificent Capilla Real the sculptured effigies 
of those sovereigns repose. While Cortez and Pizarro were looting the Sun temples 
and in their greed obliterating the monuments of civilizations in Mexico and Peru, 



28 The Standard Guide. 

Spanish architects were building cathedrals and universities and royal courts, Yandel- 
vira at Jaen, Pedro Gumiel at Alcala in Aragon, and Mechuca and Berreguete at 
Granada. The beginning of the Spanish Renaissance, too, was in the years of Ponce 
de Leon and the discovery of Florida; its glory had not passed when our old Florida 
town was established. None more fitly chosen then; nor unless architectural style be 
wholly meaningless could the purpose of the hotel architects have been so well attained 
with any other. And since history is so largely a chronicle of wars and conquests, and 
the records of the early years of St. Augustine have in them so much that is dark 
and cruel and forbidding in Spanish character, we ought to be grateful both for the 
generous enterprise which planned this architectural adornment of the city, and for 
the good taste which has embodied in that adornment a reminder of the brighter 
qualities of the Spanish race, its genius and its art. 

The grounds chosen as a site were those which will be readily identified by 
former visitors, when it is stated that they included the Anderson and Ball estates. 
These were and are the most beautiful in St. Augustine, with groves of orange and 
lemon, moss-hung lanes, orange archways, mulberries, magnolias and myrtles, palms 
and palmettos, lawns, hedges and rose gardens. Amid these surroundings has 
risen the Hotel Ponce de Leon, imposing in magnitude, graceful in proportions, 
beautiful in design and exquisite in the profusion and richness of its decorative details. 

The general arrangement of the hotel is shown in the illustration on page 29. 
The main structure is built on three sides of a quadrangular court, on the fourth 
side of which extends a one-story portico, with a gateway in the center. The front- 
age on the Alameda is 380 feet, the depth on Cordova street 520 feet. The inclosed 
court is 150 feet square. The main building with the court covers an area of four 
and one-half acres, the dining hall and the other buildings one and one-half acres 
more. The towers rise 165 feet against the sky. The hotel has 450 rooms. These 
are figures of magnitude; and yet so beautiful is the composition, so true are the 
proportions, so varied the outlines, that the vast size is not at first comprehended 
nor thought of. Only after familiarity do we gain a conception of the magnificent 
distances. Moreover, simply to regard it as a great inn, even though as one unsur- 
passed for elegance and luxury, is to take an inadequate view of the Ponce de Leon. 
A vast caravansary indeed, but first and chiefly an example of architectural design, 
commanding admiration and repaying careful study; its qualities to be appreciated 
aright only by those who can estimate them by some other measure than the ordinary 
American standards of bigness and cost. 

As we approach the hotel, attention is first attracted to the graceful towers, then 
to the great dome and its copper lantern, and then to the broad roofs with their red 
crinkled tiles and their dormer windows, the porticoes, loggias, and the corner turrets 
carried up into low towers with open galleries and overhanging roofs. 

The main material is the shell concrete, which has been described in the fore- 
going chapter; and the hotel thus partakes of the monolithic character of concrete 
buildings. Brick is used in the arches and window jambs: and the corbels, balconies 
end ornaments are of terra-cotta. 

The color effects are in the highest degree pleasing. The prevailing tint is the 



3o The Standard Guide. 

delicate pearl-gray of the concrete, which turns to a blue in the shadows, and serves: 
most admirably to set off the red brick work, the bright salmon of the terra-cotta, 
and the glowing red of the Spanish roof tiles. The shades harmonize deliciously. 
It is worth while, too, to note the entire absence of paint, and that the color effects 
of the exterior are all secured by the inherent shades of the materials of construction. 
This rule likewise prevails in the court, which, in keeping with the Spanish Renais- 
sance style, is more highly decorated than the outer walls; and again in the marbles 
and woodwork of the interior. 

From no point of view are the external forms and colors other than pleasing; 
there are no blank sheer walls, nor any unfinished sides to hide; everywhere is com- 
pleteness, and everywhere dignity and grace of outline. Thus viewed from without, 
the hotel is a structure whose architectural merits are not fully comprehended on the 
instant. The effects vary with the hours; all day long the changing lights and the 
play of the shadows reveal new combinations of beauty, and when illuminated at 
night the hotel is still a delight to the eye. For the Ponce de Leon, it must be 
remembered, is a true work of art, and like every creation of cultivated taste, it 
improves with study, and growing on one commands renewed admiration the longer 
it is contemplated. 

If this is true of the general impression, when one looks upon it from the Ala- 
meda, or from the west through the green foliage of orange and oak, much more is 
it true when we come to study the details of construction and decoration within. As 
we have said, the dream of the projector of this palatial structure did not end with 
the erection of a richly appointed and luxurious hotel; his purpose reached beyond 
this and demanded that as the shell material of the walls was found here on Anastasia 
Island, and the hotel was in its very structure to be of St. Augustine, so in their dec- 
oration the walls should speak as with a thousand tongues of Spanish St. Augustine 
and its storied past. The architects and artists spent two years in perfecting these 
details; and how successfully their task has been accomplished will be seen on a 
closer examination. We shall miss a full appreciation of the merits of their work, 
unless we bear constantly in mind the historical theme they have sought to illustrate;, 
the significance of the adornments are not to be comprehended by one who is igno- 
rant of or wholly indifferent to the chronicles of St. Augustine. 

The historic symbolism of the decoration is to be observed at the very gateway 
of the court. The entrance, in the center of the one-story portico, on the Alameda, 
is designated by two independent gateposts, on each one of which, carved in high 
relief, is a lion's masque. It is the heraldic lion of Leon, that sturdy Spanish town 
which so long and so bravely withstood the Moors; and an emblem, too, of the 
doughty warrior, Juan Ponce de Leon, proclaimed in his epitaph '■ a lion in name and 
a lion in heart." These posts have highly finished capitals in Spanish Renaissance 
patterns. The full-centered arch of the gateway is surmounted by a heavy over- 
hanging roof; and in the deep coves of the eaves are arched panels filled with ara- 
besques and tracery in richly-tinted faience. Above, repeated in the spandrels of the 
panel arches, is the stag s head, the sacred totem of Seloy. 



2)2 The Standard Guide. 

Without the council hall, aloft on its staff was the effigy of an antlered stag, looking out over the 
ocean toward the sunrise. For annually, at the coming of spring, the people of Seloy selected the skin 
of a huge deer, stuffed it with choicest herbs and decked it with fruits and flowers; and then bearing 
it with music and song to the appointed spot and setting it up on its lofty perch, consecrated it as a 
new offering to the Sun god, that because of it he might smile upon the fields and fructify the planted 
seed and send to his children an abundant harvest — Old St. Augustine, " The Huguenots in Florida." 

Passing beneath the raised portcullis of the gateway and through the portico, we 
enter the fountain court, a delicious mass of foliage in many shades of green, with 
tropical plants, waving plumes, brilliant flowers, and a fountain plashing in the center. 
On the north side of the court, directly opposite the gateway, is the grand en- 
trance; and in the centers of the wings, east and west, are other entrances. From 
the gateway and the entrances walks converge to the fountain in the center, and are 
intersected by another circular walk, which runs around the court. The whole area 
is thus divided into garden terraces of geometric patterns, after the Spanish manner. 
The court is surrounded by arcades, whose pillars and arches give them the char- 
acter of cloistered walks. Rooms open upon the arcades, vines clamber over their 
arches, and easy chairs invite to repose. The ranges of windows in the second story 
are broken, in the spaces above the doorways, by arched open balconies; and around 
the third story, just beneath the overhanging roof, is a continuous loggia, whose 
carved woodwork is in pleasant contrast with the masonry. Still higher, in the great 
red roofs, are the rows of dormer-windows, giving a cosy, home-like character to the 
whole composition, and suggesting swallows under the eaves, although there are no 
swallows here. The central dome of the main building is one of the distinguishing 
features of the Spanish Renaissance, and the open arcaded story at the top was with 
the architects of that period a favorite device to secure lightness and deep shadows. 

Turn which way we will in the court, there are charming combinations of light 
and shade; the general effect is restful; there are cool inviting vistas everywhere. 
Here, where the sun shines in winter as in summer, the architects have improved 
every opportunity to make the most of shadow effects; and the overhanging roofs, 
affording grateful shade, are repeated ^gain and again. 

From the gateway of the court the majestic towers are seen for the first time in 
their full proportions. The towers are square, with a balustrade about the top, and 
from the upper platform is carried up a round tower, with high conical roof, sur- 
mounted by an elaborate metal finial. Each side of the square tower is pierced near 
the top with an arched window, opening upon a flat corbelled balcony, with a low 
projection. These windows remind us of the balconies of Mohammedan mosques; 
and from them, at morning, noon or nightfall, we might almost expect to hear the 
muezzin's call to prayer. Above these windows is an open gallery of observation. 
The massive and donjon character, which towers of this magnitude might easily 
have, has been entirely avoided, and their chief characteristic, considering the size, 
is an airy lightness entirely in keeping with the remainder of the composition. The 
shadow and color combinations, as the eye follows the statel) r tower to the bright 
. metal tip, 165 feet against the blue sky, are changeful and effective. 

Crossing the court, past the fountain — which is a well-ordered combination of 



34 The Standard Guide. 

marble, stone and terra-cotta, the shaft being of terra-cotta inlaid with marble mosaics, 
surrounded with grotesque frogs and turtles and other water creatures in the basins, 
all spouting water in different directions — we approach the grand entrance. This is a 
full-centered arch, twenty feet wide. Around the face of the arch, in a broad band, 
carved in relief on a row of shields, a letter to a shield, runs the legend, Ponce de Leon. 
Garlands depend from the shields, which are supported by mermaids. This is an- 
other suggestion of the sea as the source whence came the shell composite of the hotel 
walls; and also of the sea as the field of his achievements whose name is here in- 
scribed. The suggestion is further emphasized in the shell-patterned diaper in the 
spandrels of the arch, and yet again in the marine devices of the coats-of-arms on the 
two shields. To complete the composition of the doorway, there are above the main 
arch six small full-centered arches, in pairs, carried on spirally-fluted columns. About 
each pair of arches is an elaborate belt moulding, which is also carried down in vert- 
ical lines on each side of the main door, terminating in corbels at the springing line 
of the arch. On either side of the door is a circular window of stained-glass of geo- 
metric pattern. 

The other entrances, on the east and west, should have attention before we leave 
the court. In the wall, on each side of the doorway, is a deep fountain niche, with 
the top carried up into pinnacles, which give fine shadow effects. The water issues 
from the mouth of a dolphin. Above the door, in the key of the arch, is a shield 
with a shell device, and medallions with Spanish proverbs occupy the spandrels. As 
in the main entrance, the composition of the doorway is completed by arched open- 
ings above; the arches are carried on similar spirally-fluted columns, and there are 
elaborate belt mouldings. The dolphins of the fountain niches have special appro- 
priateness; they are not only typical of the sea, but have a local significance as well, 
for the bay of St. Augustine once bore the name River of Dolphins, given it by 
Laudonniere, the Huguenot captain, who anchored his ships here in 1564 (see p. 75). 
The allusion to the sea, in the dolphins and the shells, is a motive repeated again and 
again throughout the hotel; even the door-knobs are modeled after shells. 

The garlands and Cupids on the window caps and the other decorations and orna- 
ments of the court deserve a more minute description, but their elaborateness and pro- 
fuseness forbid more than just an indication of them. The amount of wall space is 
so enormous that it was impossible to treat all the surfaces with like richness; this led 
the architects to distribute the ornamentation and make it very rich, thus forming the 
most happy contrasts, really producing all the effect that it was possible to obtain, 
and avoiding the fault of over-decoration. 

Standing in the doorway of the main entrance and looking through the pillars of 
the vestibule to the caryatides of the rotunda, and beyond them to the marble columns 
at the entrance of the dining hall, we begin to have some conception of how rich and 
palatial is the hotel. The vestibule opens upon a corridor, surrounding a rotunda 
which occupies the great central space of this main building. On the right a broad 
hall leads past the hotel office to various public rooms; another on the left leads to 
the ground parlor; and directly opposite, a broad marble stairway ascends to the 
dining hall. The pavement of vestibule, corridor and rotunda is a mosaic of tiny 



36 The Standard Guide. 

bits of marble, laid in Renaissance manner. The wainscoting of the vestibule is of 
choice Numidian marbles imported from Africa; that of the corridor is of quartered 
oak. Marble fireplaces of generous dimensions give an air of welcome, and all the 
suggestions are of hospitality and comfort. 

In composition and decoration the rotunda is a marvel of grace and beauty. 
The immense dome is supported by four massive piers and eight pillars of oak, carved 
into caryatides of life size, cut from the solid quartered wood, and terminating in 
fluted shafts. The sylph-like figures have laughing, mischievous faces, and a won- 
drous semblance of life. They are in groups of four, standing back to back; and so 
graceful are the forms, so light and airy the poses, we forget the tremendous weight 
they are supporting. The rotunda is four stories in height, forming arcades and 
galleries at each story whose arches and columns are of different designs. These 
galleries overhang each other, and are supported by decorated vaults forming pene- 
trations. The effect is most pleasing, as one looks up through the entire open space, 
to the great circular penetration in the vault of the dome, sixty-eight feet above. 

While the decorations here are true to the Spanish Renaissance style, the motives 
for them have been found in the Spain and the Florida of the sixteenth century; the 
symbolism is of the spirit of that age and the impulses which then held sway. 
Painted on the pendentives of the cove ceiling of the second story, are seated female 
figures typical of Adventure, Discovery, Conquest and Civilization. Four other 
figures, which are standing, represent the elements, Earth, Air, Fire and Water. The 
paintings are in oil on a silver ground; the colors are rich and varied, and the ac- 
cessories chosen with excellent taste. In the four subjects last named the com- 
position is completed with arabesque figures of appropriate designs; and the several 
backgrounds are scattered with distinctive emblematic devices. 

Adventure wears a cuirass and in her helmet an eagle's crest. She holds a drawn 
sword. The pose is eager and alert; the features and the bearing denote reckless 
enterprise, courage, readiness to encounter peril, and the resolution which overcomes. 
The emblems on the background are arrows radiating in different directions. 

Discovery is robed in drapery whose blue is the blue of the sea. In her right 
hand is held a globe, the other rests upon a tiller. The pose of the head and the far 
reaching gaze are as if with swelling heart she were surveying the outstretched ex- 
panse of a newlv-revealed continent. The emblems are sails. 

Conquest, clad in martial red, with helmet and cuirass of mail, firmly grasps an 
upright sword, significant of might and war-won supremacy. The look in her face is 
of exultant mastery, grim consciousness of power, and a purpose inexorable. On the 
background are daggers. 

Civilization is clothed in white and wears a crown. In her lap is an open book, 
the symbol of knowledge. Her face has the repose of dignity and benevolence. The 
background reveals the repeated figure of the cross, suggesting the civilizing in- 
fluences of Christianity. 

Earth is represented as of dark complexion and is clad in robes of russet. She 
extends a horn of plenty, overflowing with fruits and the bounties of the earth; and 
by gracefully floating ribbons holds captive two peacocks, the most gorgeous birds of 



8|: is 




%^> 



LADIES' ENTRANCE HOTEL PONCE DE LEON. 



3$ The Standard Guide. 

the earth, as distinguished from those of the air. Snails are the devices on the 
background. 

Air is an etherial form, with winged heels, fair hair and diaphanous drapery 
of a very pale blue tint which fades at times almost into absence of color. One hand 
restrains the flight of two magnificent eagles, and in the other are lightly held dande- 
lion downs, ready at a breath to spring into the air and float away on the zephyrs. 
This is one of the most charming conceits in the whole scheme of decoration. The 
emblems on the background are dragon-flies and butterflies. 

The figure of Fire, auburn-haired and clothed in drapery of glowing red, stands 
amid tongues of flame and holds on high a blazing torch. The arabesques are sal- 
amanders, embodying the only life fabled to live in fire. The emblems are flames. 

In sharp contrast with these brilliant hues are the marine tints which predominate 
in the pictured fancy of Water. She is fair-skinned and fair-haired; her robes are 
of a very pale green and white; and she stands in a shell to which sea-mosses are 
clinging. With ribbons she controls two prancing sea-horses, emblematic of the 
ocean's restlessness and might. On the background are starfishes. 

The decorations in the penetrations are lyres with swans on either side. The 
lyres are surmounted alternately by a masque of the Sun god of the Florida Indians, 
and by the badge of the most illustrious order of Spanish knighthood, the Golden 
Fleece, depending from its flint-stone surrounded by flames of gold. Where this ap- 
pears, the design of the border is the Collar of the Golden Fleece, the chain of double 
steels interlaced with flint-stones. 

Below in the spandrels of the corridor arches is seen the stag's head, barbaric 
emblem of sun-worshipping Seloy. Shields bear the arms of the present provinces 
of Spain, and on cartouches are emblazoned the names of the great discoverers of 
America. Cornucopias are favorite forms here, as elsewhere throughout the hotel. 

The decorations do not end with this story. The upper dome is modeled in 
high relief; around its base dances a band of laughing Cupids; between these 
figures are circular openings; and the vault above is all modeled with delicate tracery 
of pure white and gold effects; casques and sails signify the military and maritime 
achievements of Spain; and the crown of the dome is surrounded with eagles. 

A broad stairway of marble and Mexican onyx leads from the corridor to a landing, 
from which is entered the passage leading to the dining hall. In delightfully antique 
letters set in mosaic in the floor of the landing, is the aptly chosen verse of welcome, 
taken from Shenstone: 

Whoe'er has travell'd life's dull round, 
Where'er his stages may have been, 
May sigh to think he still has found 
The warmest welcome at an inn. 

From this landing, stairways of oak lead to the rotunda and halls above. The wain- 
scoting of the stairways is of Verona and pink Numidian marble; and above this, set 
in the walls, in frames of oak, are two paintings, "The Landing of Columbus," and 
"The Introduction of Christianity to the Huns by Charlemagne." The passage 
to the doors of the dinintr hall is beneath a beautifully chiseled arch of Verona 



The Standard Giiide. 39 

marble, of a deep red color; and in the spandrels are mosaic patterns of Numidian, 
Verona and Sienna marbles, and African and Mexican onyx. A font-shaped bal- 
cony projects above, supporting a musicians' gallery, which overlooks both the 
rotunda and the dining room. This balcony is of Verona marble, and the railing is 
delicately carved in oak. Here again note that the effects of elegance and richness 
are not secured by surface paint, but by the employment of materials in which those 
qualities are inherent. 

The dimensions of the dining hall are magnificent. It has an area of 90 by 150 
feet; and there are seats for 800 guests. The main hall, 90 feet square, is divided 
from two semi-circular alcoves on the east and west ends by rows of oak columns. 
These columns support a great elliptical barrel-vault, and the clerestory is pierced with 
stained-glass windows, forming penetrations. The ceiling is 36 feet measured from 
the floor to the apex of the vault. The rounded ends of the alcoves have great bay- 
windows. Two musicians' galleries overhang the hall, one on the north and one on 
the south. In its wealth of adornment this hall is the pride and masterpiece of 
the hotel. Beauty of form, which everywhere charms the eye, is supplemented by 
richness and harmony of color, and these in turn by the good taste shown in the 
choice of themes for the decoration. Of the work which has here been lavished, 
on every side, by loving hands, no just appreciation can be had except after repeated 
study of the details, and no description of it can be made fully intelligible without 
the aid of illustrations. The light is mellowed in its passage through the stained- 
glass windows of the clerestory and through the magnificent masses' of stained and 
clear leaded glass which make up almost the entire ends of the rounded extensions. 
The prevailing shade is a creamy yellow, variety being secured by the different colors 
employed in the decorations. 

On each end, north and south, of the central hall is a high wainscoting in antique 
oak of choice grains. Above this, on a ground of blue green, is a panel of dancing 
Cupids, with roguish faces and outstretched hands, representing the feast; some ex- 
tend clusters of luscious grapes, and bread and cups of wine in welcome to the 
guests, while others ladle steaming olla from great Spanish calderons. On the wall 
above are pictured ships of Spain, with sails full set and gracefully waving streamers 
and pennants; they are the high-pooped Spanish caravels of the sixteenth century, 
just such vessels as that in which came Ponce de Leon to Florida in his search for 
the fountain. In the key of the arch over the musicians' balcony is a shield bearing 
an heraldic device, with legend, "P de L — 1885-1887." Dancing girls support the 
shield, and outside of these are figures of Fame blowing trumpets. Four mermaids 
one in each corner, support the border which goes over the ends of the ceiling. 
On the yellow surface of the vault are delicate arabesques traced in various colors 
and gold and silver. 

On the pendentives between the stained-glass windows, allegorical paintings 
represent the Four Seasons. They are female figures, winged to typify their 
rapid flight ; and the two different fancies present a dual conception of each 
subject. In grace of form not less than in their admirable color effects these paint- 
ings are as worthy of careful study as were those of the rotunda. For his colors the 



4-0 The Standard Guide. 

artist has gone to nature. The pale draperies of Spring reflect the delicate green 
shades of the fresh May foliage; in one fancy she is pictured as sowing grain; in the 
other she holds spring flowers and a branch with bursting buds. The draperies of 
the figures of Summer are bright with color; in one fancy the accessories are a sheaf 
of wheat and a sickle; in the other luxuriant summer verdure. Autumn is given 
russet robes; one figure with bunches of purple grapes represents the vintage; the 
other dancing, with a tambourine, the merry-making of the harvest home. In the 
paintings of Winter the colors are rich and warm; the two aspects of the season 
here depicted are its hardships and its festivities; the first figure, warmly clad, with 
bright scarf and closely muffled hood, bears an axe and a bundle of fagots; the 
other partially draped is bringing in the boar's head. 

In the ceiling, on a becoming ground of gold, are seen Spanish proverbs, pithy 
saws and admonitions to the guests below. Among them are these: Change of 
pasture makes fat calves. — The ass that brays most eats least. — Old friends and old 
wines are the best. — Good wine needs no bush. To these might well have been added 
that saying current among the Spaniards, in which is expressed their affectionate 
esteem of St. Augustine — Never an olla without bacon nor a sermon without St. 
Augustine. 

The chief decorative design in the flat ceiling of the alcoves gives a concise 
historical summary in the form of a pictograph. The general scheme is an adapta- 
tion of the picture-writing of the American Indians — that system of hieroglyphics 
cut in the wasting bark of trees, or carved on the face of the enduring rock, 
there to remain long after the tribes whose exploits they recounted should have 
been swept from the earth. The primitive characters were simple and rude, but 
to the initiated they were as full of meaning as to us the glowing pages of the 
printed book. Now, to the deft artist give for a worthy theme the romantic history 
of Florida and St. Augustine; and let it be required of him to chronicle the story in 
picture-writing after the Indian style, but in characters refined and dignified and 
given symmetry and beauty of color — and you have the record as it is written here in 
letters of brown on a gold background. The theme was deserving of treatment as by 
one who loves his art, and in such fashion indeed has it been done. Here, sweeping 
along under full sail, is a Spanish galleon, the ship of Ponce de Leon, the first that 
came to these shores. May it not have been that in the eventful year of 15 12, some 
Indian here in the village of Seloy recorded on a palmetto trunk the strange vision of 
this same ship? Other caravels mark the expeditions of Pamphilo de Narvaez, in 
1527, and Hernando de Soto, in 1539. Ships with all sail set signify a successful 
voyage; dismasted hulks stand for disaster and shipwreck; several ships together a 
large fleet; forts a permanent settlement; the several nationalities are designated by 
their distinctive heraldic devices — the Fleur-de-lis of France for the Huguenots, 
the Lion and Castle of Spain for Menendez. A sword, skulls and crossbones 
commemorate the pitiful death of Jean Ribault and his fellows at Matanzas; a 
hand holding a dagger, and the Fleur-de-lis again, record the vengeance of 
Dominique de Gourgues. Ships and cannon mark the assaults by Drake and 
Davis, and the bombardments and sieges by Moore and Oglethorpe. The sue- 




Sto«« ■ i hM to St, Aw 



HOTEL PONCE DE LEON— ST. AUGUSTINE, FLORIDA 



The Standard Guide. 



41 




TOWER, DOME AND ROOF TERRACE. 
(By courtesy 0/ the ^American Architect? 1 ) 

cessive changes of supremacy, Spanish, British, Spanish again, and finally that of 
the United States, are indicated by the national emblems, the American coat-of-arms 
closing the record at the cession of Florida to the United States in 1821. Arabesque 
designs of sea-horses, ridden by sea-sprites, surmount the cartouche and emphasize 
the ever-recurring suggestion of the sea as a field of enterprise and endeavor. Among 
the other decorations of these ceilings are the signs of the Zodiac, painted in antique 
green on a gold ground. In the penetrations and on the pendentives appear the arms 
of the ancient provinces of Spain, with candelabra and other designs; and supporting 
these candelabra are arabesques of mermaids and mermen. Three domes in each 
alcove, from which chandeliers depend, are filled with Renaissance ornaments. 



42 The Standard Giczde. 

The grand parlor is a magnificent room 104X53 feet. The effect of grandeur 
which attaches to a room of such dimensions, is happily supplemented by the dis- 
position of piers and arches, which break up the parlor into easy corners. The walls 
and decorations are in ivory-white and gold, with Cupids and garlands and filmy 
drapery amid the clouds in the corner ceilings. Note of the rich furnishings of the 
parlor is foreign to the purpose of this chapter, but the visitor will not fail to notice 
the carved mantle with its clock of transparent Mexican onyx, and the numerous 
paintings. There are other paintings in the upper corridors of the rotunda, whose 
subjects have been taken from Florida history; among them is an interesting and 
authentic portrait of the Seminole chief Osceola. 

There yet remain many features of the hotel deserving of special mention did 
space permit; and there are others which should have detailed description, were it 
the intent here to set forth the character of the building as a hotel with relation to 
the entertainment of guests. The design of these pages is, however, only to hint of 
the successful way in which the architects and artists have carried out the original 
plan and spirit of the Ponce de Leon, and to emphasize the justice of the claim that 
their work in its completion is of a character which appeals to higher than sybaritic 
tastes. 

The architects of the Hotel Ponce de Leon were Messrs. Carrere and Hastings, 
of New York. The frescos and mural decorations are by Mr. Thomas Hastings and 
Mr. George W. Maynard, assisted by Mr. H. T. Schladermundt. 

The balconies of the main tower command a prospect of many miles. Thence 
one may look to the east where roll the breakers on the bar, to the south where shine 
in the afternoon sun the walls of the old Spanish fort at Matanzas inlet, and to the 
west where winds the St. Sebastian. Below and on every side are the variegated 
shades of green which are the glory of Florida. If, as we have said, the grace of 
these towers has added a new charm to the town, surely they have been set amid no 
unworthy surroundings. . Long search would have been required to discover for the 
Ponce de Leon a more fitting site than here in orange-embowered St. Augustine. 



On the south side of the Alameda opposite the Ponce de Leon is the Alcazar, an 
adjunct of the hotel, and in architecture a fitting complement of it. The Alcazar, 
of the Spanish Renaissance style, was designed by Messrs. Carrere and Hastings. The 
building material is concrete, with terra-cotta ornaments and Spanish roof tiles. 
These give the rich color combinations already described, and the towers, pavilions, 
minarets and overhanging roofs also afford the grateful shadow effects noted. At 
this stage of construction the crescent arcade shown in our illustration has not been 
added, but without it the Alcazar presents an imposing facade, and the impression of 
immense size is strengthened as the eye follows the line of the countless minarets 
and the broken outline of roofs on Cordova street. The statement has been made 
several times in print that the north facade is a reproduction of that of the famous 
Alcazar (Al-kasr, the House of Caesar) of Seville; but this is incorrect; the two 
facades bear no resemblance to each other, and the Alcazar, like the Ponce de Leon, 



The Standard Guide. 43 

is original throughout. Within is a court of flowers, shrubbery and vines, with an 
ingenious fountain playing in the center. The court — not unworthy to be compared 
with the patios of the Alcazars in Spain — is surrounded by an arcade, upon which 
open shops and offices. Beyond this court are the great swimming pools of sulphur 
water from the artesian wells and of salt water from the bay. South are tennis courts. 
The group of concrete hotels on the Alameda is completed by the Hotel 
Cordova. The Cordova was designed by Mr. F. W. Smith. In style it does not 
follow the Spanish Renaissance architecture; the suggestions for its heavy walls and 
battlemented towers were found in the strong castles and town defenses of Spain; 
it recalls those architectural monuments of the warring ages of the past; vast piles 
of masonry, which grew with the increments of hundreds of years, amid the conflicts 
of Roman and Goth and Moor and Christian. Thus the archway on the north 
facade, formerly a gateway, flanked by massive towers round and square, was an 
adaptation of the Puerto del Sol, or Gate of the Sun, of Toledo, one of the famous 
remains of the Moorish dominion in Spain. There is something in the strength of 
the Cordova that recalls to old residents of St. Augustine the coquina defenses 
which once distinguished this locality; opposite the Cordova was the high-walled 
garden of the Spanish Governor with its battery facing the west. The balconies of 
the lower range of windows are the "kneeling balconies" of Seville, so called 
because the protruding base was devised by Michael Angelo to permit the faithful 
to kneel at the passing of religious festivals. 



The Memorial Presbyterian Church, erected in 1889 by Mr. H. M. Flagler, occu- 
pies a site on Valencia and Sevilla streets, northwest of the Hotel Ponce de Leon. 
It is an elaborate structure, in the style of the Venetian Renaissance, and was 
designed by Messrs. Carrere and Hastings. In wealth of exterior decoration the 
building surpasses any other one in St. Augustine. Our illustration is from the 
architects' drawing; certain details here given, as in the finishing of the dome, have 
been modified in the final scheme; the point of view is on Sevilla street, showing the 
east side of the church, with the parsonage. While the grace of form and outline is 
indicated in the engraving, it is manifestly impossible that any printed illustration 
should give a true conception of the richness and beauty to which color contributes 
so essential a part. This is all the more true when, as in the present instance, the 
color effects have not been left to hap-hazard, nor been determined by the exigencies 
of the material employed; but have been carefully and with good artistic taste deter- 
mined upon beforehand and selected, as was the design of the building itself, with 
intelligent reference to the site and its surroundings. To know what happy success 
has been achieved, one must study the Memorial Church, and with pleased eye note 
the harmonious blending of its colors and its grateful contrasts; the pearl gray, the 
body color of the shell concrete, with the cream white of the terra cotta and the 
golden yellow of the brick work, the bronze finials, the great copper dome; and the 
Florida foliage and sunlight and sky to complete the charm of the picture. 




THE CITY GATEWAY. 

At the head of St. George Street. 

LANDMARKS are rapidly disappearing from St. Augustine, but the 
pillars of the ancient city gateway still remain as notable monu- 
ments of the past. When first seen these towers are quite likely 
to be a disappointment, for their proportions are not so grand as 
""•-- ' they are often pictured. Moreover the gate has been outgrown 

and dwarfed; and it no longer possesses the advantage of a commanding position on 
the town's outskirts. Dwellings crowd close upon it, overtopping the towers; a huge 
hotel looms up beyond. Irreverence might even dub the gateway ridiculous. 

But it was not always so. Inconsequential as may be these towers now, there 
was a time when they stood out bravely enough, and when in their security St. 
Augustine rejoiced. In those days they looked out upon an illimitable wilderness; 
the belated traveler hurried on to their shelter; and the town slept securely when 
the Barrier Gate was fast shut against the midnight approach of a foe from without. 
Stoutly their walls gave their strength when it was needed, and defended for the 
King of Spain his garrison town in Florida. They have witnessed many a narrow 
escape and many a gallant rescue. More than once have they trembled with the 
shock of assault, and more than once driven back the foe repulsed. To-day, dis- 
mantled and useless, out of keeping with the customs of the day and the spirit of the 
age, long since left behind by the outstretching town, the picturesque old ruins linger 
as cherished landmarks. Here we are on historic ground. 

The gateway is the only conspicuous relic of the elaborate system of fortifica- 
tions which once defended St. Augustine. The town being on a narrow peninsula 
running south, an enemy could approach by land only from the north. Across this 
northern boundary, east and west, from water to water, ran lines of fortification, 
which effectually barred approach. From the Fort a deep ditch ran across to the 
St. Sebastian; and was defended by a high parapet, with redoubts and batteries. The 
ditch was flooded at high tide. Entrance to the town was by a drawbridge across 
the moat and through the gate. Earthworks extended along the St. Sebastian River 
in the rear (west) of the town, and around to the Matanzas again on the south. The 
gate was closed at night. Guards were stationed in the sentry boxes. Just within 
'.he gate was a guard house, with a detachment of troops. 



if--"--' 



\Z1 
J ] 




RUINS OF GATEWAY. 



46 



The Standard Guide. 



The line of the ditch and parapet may still be traced along Orange street; and 
the remains of some of the old earthworks are to be seen along the St. Sebastian. 

Emerging from these solitudes and shades, we espied the distant yet distinct lights of the watch 
towers of the fortress of St. Augustine, delightful beacons to my weary pilgrimage. The clock was 
striking ten as I reached the foot of the drawbridge; the sentinels were passing the alcrto, as I 
demanded entrance; having answered the preliminary questions, the drawbridge was slowly lowered. 
The officer of the guard, having received my name and wishes, sent a communication to the governor, 
who issued orders for my immediate admission. On opening the gate, the guard was ready to receive 
me, and a file of men, with their officer, escorted me to his Excellency, who expressed his satisfaction at 
my revisit to Florida. — Voyage to the Spanish Main, 1S17. 

The towers are very old. They had fallen into partial ruin so early as the be- 
ginning of the present century. In 1810, at the Governor's command, all the town's 
male inhabitants between 12 and 60 years of age were compelled to labor at the 
restoration of the gate and the other fortifications. At a later date the west tower 
was partially demolished and clumsily rebuilt. The stone causeway leading out from 
the gate is modern. The sentry boxes have recently been repaired and are now 
furnished with iron gratings to protect them from vandals who know no better than 
to chip off pieces of stone as relics. The material is coquina. The pillars are 20 feet 
in height, to the mouldings; and 10 feet deep; the flanking walls are 30 feet in length; 
roadway between the pillars, 12 feet. The walls were formerly provided with ban- 
quettes, or raised platforms on the interior, upon which the guard stepped to 
discharge his fire over the wall, with a single step regaining shelter. 

Even the pillars of the city gate, which next to the fort are the chief memorials of Old St. 
Augustine, have barely escaped demolition at the hand of the vandal; for once- upon a time, aeon- 
tractor was assigned the work of building a stone causeway from the gate, in the place of the old draw- 
bridge, which formerly crossed the ditch at that point; and being in need of coquina, this unworthy 
workman, laying violent hands on what was nearest, began to tear away the gateway pillars. Com- 
pelled to restore the plundered stone to its place, he botched the work, and in the clumsy restoration 
has left an enduring monument of his lazy shiftlessness. — Old St. Augustine. 




RUINS OF GATEWAY — FROM THE NORTHWEST. 



THE PLAZA. 




PLEASING bit of greensward in the center of the town is the 
Plaza. It is a public park of shrubbery and shade trees, with 
monuments and fountains, an antiquated market place invit- 
ing one to loiter, and an outlook to the east over the bay 
and Anastasia Island to the sails of ships at sea. All this is 
the more charming to those who remember the Plaza — not 
so many years ago — when it was an unshaded, unkempt, un- 
inviting waste of scanty turf and blowing sand. Long before 
those days it had been beautiful with orange trees, whose 
wonderful size and fruitfulness are yet among the town's tradi- 
tions. The square is diminutive, but it is unconsciously mag- 
nified because of the contrast to the narrow streets whence one emerges upon its 
stretch of greensward. 

The open structure on the east end of the Plaza is commonly pointed out as the 
"old slave pen," or "slave market," and it is sometimes alleged to have been of 
Spanish origin. It never was used as a "slave pen," nor as a "slave market," nor 
had the Spaniards anything to do with it, for they had left the country twenty years 
before it was built. The market (burned in 1887 and restored) was built in 1840; it 
was intended for a very prosaic and commonplace use, the sale of meat and other 
food supplies, and it was devoted to that use. A print of the town in 1848 shows the 
market thronged with men and women with baskets; and it is hardly worth while to 
point out that in those days purchasers did not carry home human chattels in baskets. 
The requirements of St. Augustine long since outgrew this primitive style of mart, 
and the Plaza market has become a lounging place where idlers bask in the sun and 
exchange gossip. 

It was not until the influx of curiosity seeking tourists, after the Civil War that 
any one thought of dubbing the Plaza market a " slave pen " or " slave market. 
The ingenious photographer who labeled his views of the old meat market "slave 
pen " sold so many of them to sensation hungry strangers that he has since retired 
with a competence; and when he sets up a crest he will no doubt take for his arms a 
negro in chains, after the fashion of old John Hawkins, father of the British slave 



4 8 



The Standard Guide. 



trade. The " slave market," " Huguenot Cemetery " and " oldest house " yarns have 
-been told so often to credulous visitors that there are now some residents of St. 
Augustine who actually almost believe the stories themselves. There have been 
never wanting strangers to give implicit belief to the tales, and forgetting all the 
romantic conflicts of the past waged here in St. Augustine, to stand and gape in 




THE OLD PLAZA MARKET. 



foolish wonder at the old market; just as in like manner, perhaps, if brought into the 
presence of a hero of a hundred fateful conflicts, they would ignore the record of his 
valor and stand lost in vulgar contemplation of a wart on his nose. 

There is the " l'laza de la Constitution " [sic], where the good Christians burnt their brethren a 
century ago. * :: ' * In the center stands the curious old market place, * * * this was the 
ancient slave mart, where God's image, carved in ebony, was bought and sold in most ungodly fashion; 
there is the place where they stood ranged in rows like cattle in a pen, so that the purchasers might 
walk to and fro examining them from all points to see that they had their money's worth. — Lady Duff its 
Hardy, "Down South." 

All of which is interesting chiefly because it shows us that in writing grotesque 
accounts of what he thinks he sees in this country the traveling Englishman can be 
outdone by his countrywomen. Nero is credited with having burned Christians in oil 
to light up his orgies. Lady Hardy appears ruthlessly to have made the St. Augustine 
''Christians burn their brethren," for no other reason than to light her page with a 



The Standard Gtcide. 49 

dime novel glow. The list is long of writers on St. Augustine of whom it might be 
said that they would do better " not to know so much than to know so. many things 
that aint so." Even Henry W. Longfellow wrote, in Poems of Places, that St. Augus- 
tine had "been many times ravaged by the French, Indians and Spanish;" but of not 
a one of these ravagings does history give us any account, unless we reckon as 
" French " the Boucaniers from Hispaniola, who came here in 1665 under the leader- 
ship of Admiral Davis, fell upon the town, drove out the inhabitants, sacked and 
burned the dwellings, and sailed away with little booty for their pains. 

The park takes its name of Plaza de la Constitucion from the monument erected 
here by the Spaniards in 1813. This is a pyramid of coquina, stuccoed and white- 
washed, rising from a stone pedestal, and surmounted by a cannon ball. It is not a 
work of high artistic pretension, nor of very imposing proportions, but its history is 
curious. The existence of such a memorial here in the United States is incongruous, 
for it commemorates a minor event of European history. 

In 1S12, the Spanish Cortes completed the formation of a new and liberal constitution. In 
commemoration of this, monuments were erected in Spain and the Spanish provinces. Among others 

was this one in the province of Florida, the 
J'lQ'ZQ d(? \d ConStitllCiOTl. square then taking the name Plaza de la Consti- 

o-, , , „. , , . - tiicion. Finally, in 1814, the war for independ- 

JVomuloada en esta Ciudadae oan , , . . , , __ . . 

~ i ~ ence was brought to a successful termination; 

-Aoustin clela Florida Oriental en and Fer dinand VII., having pledged himself 

17 de Ocluljreclel8l2 siendo £oberrv.u to support the new constitution, was recalled 

dor el Jjrioadicr_/>ori Sebastian Kin to the throne. Once in power, almost his first 

dalerrv Cciballero del Orderi de SanUaoo act was to repudiate the new constitution and 

J^ei ra eterna memoricL. * ecla A re il nul1 a H nd vo f Thr ° u ? hout s P ain ™* 

ry ryi _v „ her American dependencies it was commanded 

U A uoniam.cnlo ConstUucAonal Crv^o that the monuments erec ted two years previously 

estc U^isco dirtgidcC porjDonl^ernando ; n commemoration of the constitution, should be 

delay^ia^rredor^oeljo^ J?ejudor destroyed. Notwithstanding the royal decree, 

2>ecano yj/on Francisco ytobira. this one in Florida was not torn down. The 

J r^curador Sindico.-w tablets were removed, but four years later (1S18) 

77. 1 'lQl'T. "' ere restored to their places, where they have 

-61 HO Ue J.OIO remained ever since.— " Old St. Augustine," 

Later Years. 
The Spanish inscription on the monument sets forth, as translated: " Plaza of the Constitution 
promulgated in the city of St. Augustine, in East Florida, on the 17th day of October, in the year 1812'; 
the Brigadier Don Sebastian Kindalem, Knight of the Order of Santiago, being Governor. For eternal 
remembrance the Constitutional City Council erected this monument, under the superintendence of Don 
Fernando de la Maza Arredondo, the young municipal officer, oldest member of the corporation, and 
Don Francisco Robira, Attorney and Recorder. In the year 1813." 

A second monument in the Plaza, erected by the Ladies' Memorial Association, commemorates 
the volunteers from St. Augustine and vicinity, who lost their lives in the Confederate service. The 
shaft is of coquina, and bears the inscriptions: " Our Dead. Erected by the Ladies' Memorial Associa- 
tion of St. Augustine, Fla., A. D. 1872." " In Memoriam. Our loved ones who gave their lives in 
the service of the Confederate States." " They died far from the home that gave them birth." " They 
have crossed the river and rest under the shade of the trees." 



The Standard Guide. 



Originally, no doubt, the square was designed as a parade for the maneuvering 
of troops. On a map of the town in British times, given in Old St. Augustine, it is 
designated as " The Parade Ground." For this purpose it was employed so late as 
1865, when the sunset dress-parade of the United States troops on the Plaza was — 
next to the daily arrival of the mail stage — the great event of the day. 

Always a place of public assemblage, the Plaza has been the scene of two inci- 
dents which strikingly illustrate the curious vicissitudes of the town's history. The 
first of these was on that historic night in the year 1776 when the loyal British sub- 
jects of King George III. came 
together here and burned in 
effigy two of the' signers of the 
Declaration of Independence. 
The second one, nearly a hun- 
dred years later, was the Fourth 
of July gathering of the citizens 
of St. Augustine in mass meeting 
on the Plaza to applaud the read- 
ing of that Declaration, which 
had now a new meaning because 
cemented and made good by the 
tremendous conflicts, the price- 
less sacrifices of the Civil War. 

A person of antiquarian tastes 
might find much of interest in 
the alterations which have been 
made during the last fifty years 
in the Plaza surroundings. The 
Alameda was originally a high- 
walled alley ten feet wide; an- 
other wall shut in the lot where 
the Post Office stands on the site 
of the old Governor's house, and another extended from St. George street south to 
the Cathedral, and then to Charlotte street, where in Spanish times stood the guard 
house. 

Facing the Plaza on the west (St. George street) is the Post Office; the east 
end is open to the bay. On the south rises the spire of Trinity Church; and on the 
north St. Joseph's Cathedral. The edifice was completed in 1791, burned in 1S87 
and rebuilt and enlarged in 1887-88. One of the original bells bears the inscription, 
" Sancte • Joseph ■ Ora ■ Pro ■ Nobis ■ D ■ 1682." It has been claimed that 
this bell is the oldest on the continent; it may be the most ancient within the limits 
of the United States; it antedates by three years the famous bell in the Dutch church 
at Tarrytown, N. Y., which bears the date 1685. The Cathedral is not old when 
compared with numerous other church edifices in this country; it is, for example, 
nearly a hundred vears more modern than the Tarrvtown church referred to. 




FORT MARION. 




ORT MARION is at the north end of the sea-wall 
and commands the harbor. It is not occupied by 
troops. Open daily (admission free) from 8 A. M. 
to 4 P. M. Afternoon is the most pleasant time for 
visiting the fort. Sergeant George M. Brown, who 
is in charge, will conduct visitors through the case- 
mates. For this service, which is entirely voluntary, a fee 
^.^ Vj is usually given. The fort, which is the only example of 
mediaeval fortification on this continent, is a magnificent 
specimen of the art of military engineering as developed at the time of its construc- 
tion. It is a massive structure of coquina stone, with curtains, bastions, moat and 
outworks, covering, with the reservation, more than twenty-two acres. 

Surrounding the fort on the three land sides is an immense artificial hill of earth, 
called the glacis. From the crest of the glacis on the southeast, a bridge (i), formerly 
a drawbridge, leads across part of the moat to the barbacan. The barbacan is a for- 
tification, surrounded by the moat, directly in front of the fort entrance, which it was 
designed to protect. In the barbacan at the stairway (2) are the Arms of Spain. A 
second bridge (3), originally a drawbridge, leads from the barbacan across the wide 
moat to the sally-port (4), which is the only entrance to the fort. This was provided 
with a heavy door called the portcullis. On the outer wall, above the sally-port is the 
escutcheon, bearing the Arms of Spain; and the Spanish legend, which read: 

REYNANDO EN ESPANA EL SE.\R 
DON FERNANDO SEXTO V SIENDO 
GOVon v CAP*" DE ESa C° San .\UG» DE 
LA FLORIDA E SUS PROVa EL MARESCAL 
DE CAMPO DnALONZO FERNdo HEREDA 
ASI CONCLUIO ESTE CASTILLO EL AN 
OD 1756 DIRI^ENDO LAS OBRAS EL 
CAP INGNko DN PEDRO DE BROZAS 
V GAR AY 



Translation: "Don Ferdinand VI. , being Ring of Spain, and the Field Marshal Don Alonzo 
Fernando Hereda being Governor and Captain-General of this place, San Augustin of Florida, and its 
province, this fort was finished in the year 1756. The works were directed by the Captain-Engineer, 
Don Pedro de Brozas of Garay. " 



54 



The Standard Guide. 



The inscription has been almost obliterated by the elements. Its present condi- 
tion is admirably shown in the illustration on the opposite page. 

At the second drawbridge we come face to face with the main entrance, surmounted by a tablet 
bearing an inscription and the Spanish Coat of Arms. ' It seems to be two dragons, two houses for the 
dragons, and a supply of mutton hung up below,' said Sara irreverently making game of the royal 
insignia of Spain. — Constance Fenimore Woolson. 

Within the fort on the right of the entrance hall (5) is the old bake room (6), and 
beyond this are two dark chambers (7 and 8), which were probably used for storage. 
On the left is the guards' room (7 left). The hall opens upon a large square court 

(103 by 109 feet). Around 
this court are casemates (10), 
or rooms which were used for 
barracks, messrooms, store- 
rooms, etc. Some of these 
casemates were divided into 
lower and upper apartments. 
To each casemate on the 
west side a beam of light is 
admitted through a narrow 
window or embrasure, high 
up near the arched ceiling. 
From the first east casemate 
a door leads back into an in- 
terior dark room (9). From 
the furthest casemate (1 1) on 
the same side an entrance 
leads back into a dark cham- 
ber (12), off from which a 
narrow passage leads through 
a wall 5 feet deep into a 
space 6 feet wide; and from 
this a low aperture 2 feet 
square gives access through 
another wall 5 feet deep, into 
an innermost vault or cham- 
ber (14), which is 19^ feet 
long, 1373 feet broad, and 8 
feet high. The arched roof 
is of solid masonry. There is no other outlet than the single aperture. This is the far 
famed " dungeon " of Fort Marion. It was designed for a powder magazine or a bomb- 
proof. When the fort was in repair the .chamber was dry and fit for use as a safe 
deposit for explosives; but when the water from above percolated through the coquina, 
this bomb-proof or powder magazine became damp and unwholesome. For this 
reason it was no longer used except as a place to throw rubbish into. Then it bred 




PLAN' OF FORT MARION. 
From Old St. A ugitstinc. 
I, bridge from barbacan to glacis. 2, stairway to barb; 
moat. 4, sally-port. 5, hall. 6, bake room. 7, S, dark re 
room, g, interior dark room. 10, 10, casemates, 
dark room. 14, bomb proof. 15, chapel. 16. dark room. 
: from which Coacoochee escaped. E, bast 



7 (left) guards' 
2, interior 
treasurer's room. 



The Standard Guide. 



55 



r 




FORT MARlu.N — sI'AMSIl COAT ul-' ARMS 



56 



The Standard Guide 



fevers; and finally, as a sanitary measure, the Spaniards walled it up, and the middle 
room (12) as well. They did this in the readiest way by closing the entrance with 
coquina masonry. When the United States came into possession of the fort the 
officers stationed here did not suspect the existence of these disused chambers, 
although among the residents of the town were men who had knowledge of them, 
and of their prosaic use as a deposit for rubbish. One of these residents is still living 
(1888), and has related to the writer his recollection of the disused powder magazine, 
as he was familiar with it when he was a boy employed at the fort. In 1839 the 




FORT MARK'S — IM'UM-Ii l'l.ANE. 



masonry above the middle chamber caved in, and while the engineers were making 
repairs, the closed entrance to the innermost chamber was noticed, and investigation 
led to its discovery. Refuse and rubbish were found there. The report was given 
out — whether at the time or later — that in this rubbish were some bones. From this 
insignificant beginning the myth-makers evolved first the tale that the bones were 
human; then they added a rusty chain and a staple in the wall — a gold ring on one 
skeleton's finger — instruments of torture — iron cages — a pair of boots — and a Spanish 
Inquisition tale of horror. Writers from St. Augustine have rung the changes on it: 



vi 



4 



4i 



H 













hdmMr 1 



m*$$k'W ifl/ 




i HI 1 



$"&;•;* 



^pWj 



ro« jvimm i 




I 1 H : B 8 Sb^K^%^# p# 



' 



The Standard Guide. 57 

In one of them [the two chambers] a wooden machine was found, which some supposed might 
have been a rack, and in the other a quantity of human bones. — William Cullcn Bryant (1842). 

A human skeleton, with the fragments of a pair of boots and an empty mug for water, it is alleged 
were discovered within. * * * As to the name, character, standing, guilt or innocence, pleasures 
or pain, of the poor unfortunate to whom the boots and bones belonged, there is silence. — Rev. R. K. 
Sewall (1848,). 

There was found in one corner of it a human skeleton, the soles of a pair of shoes, and an earthen 
jug and cup. Not a single other object did its naked, shiny, arched walls cover.— Chas. Lanman (1854). 

Legends connected with the dark chambers and prison vaults, the chains, the instruments of tor- 
ture, the skeletons walled in, its closed and hidden recesses. — Geo. A. Fairbanks (1858). 

The dungeon which was discovered in eighteen something, where the rock fell in and revealed the 
skeletons of human creatures hung to the walls in iron cages, starved in sight of food and water, barred 
from the breath of heaven by solid masonry.— Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (1876). 

Chill, black, and dismal as the grave, is this partly underground dungeon, where in 1S35 two 
skeletons were found chained to the wall — victims, no doubt, to some cruel Spanish inquisition. -^Ladv 
Bit <j/ 'its Hardy (1S80). 

Near the entrance were the remains of a fire, the ashes and bits of pine wood burned off toward 
the center of the pile, in which they had been consumed. Upon the side of the cell was a rusty staple, 
with about three links of chain attached thereto. Near the wall, on the west side of the cell, were a few 
bones. Finding these very rotten, and crumbling to pieces under his touch, the engineer spread his 
handkerchief upon the floor and brushed very gently the few fragments of bone into it. These were 
shown to the surgeon then stationed at the post, who said they might be human bones, but were so badly 
crumbled and decayed, he could not determine definitely. Nothing else was found in the cell. — IV. W. 
Dewhurst (18S1). 

This tale of the bones in the dungeon was formerly received with the eager credence that the early 
explorers gave to the rumors of gold mines in Florida; but in later years, although the makers of sensa- 
tional guide books cling tenaciously to the dungeon relics, skeptics have arisen, who deny the truth of 
the story. They probably are right. It is of no moment. The fault lies not in the story of St. Augus- 
tine's three centuries, but in its telling, if the chapters of this book have not shown that the romance 
investing Fort Marion does not center about the alleged discovery of human bones in its walled-up 
chambers, and needs not to be groped for with a torch in subterranean passages. The incident even 
if true might well be spared. Who thinks otherwise, has strangely misread the historv of the changing 
fortunes which transformed the Indian council house into the fort of logs, and have converted Spain's 
proudly equipped fortress into this massive pile of crumbling masonry. 

Recall the days when San Juan de Pinos was the defense of the half-starved Spanish garrison; and 
when of those huddled within the stockades, one and other braver than the rest, ventured out beyond 
the lines for fish or game, and falling before the blow of the lurking savage, came never again. 
Remember those long years of miser)-, when Indian slave, English prisoner and Spanish convict labored 
beneath the lash of the driver, and with burdensome toil and suffering unspeakable builded their very 
lives into these coquina bastions. Replace the heavy iron gratings of casemate and cell; send home 
the clanging bolt and bar; listen to the piteous pleading of husband for imprisoned wife and of wife 
for imprisoned husband, and hear the shutting to of doors upon manacled wretches, who from the gloom 
of that inner darkness shall never emerge to look upon the sun. Light again in the dim chapel the ever- 
burning lamp before the tabernacle; restore to the niches their images, its cloth to the altar, the water 
to the font; and bring back the pageantry of ceremonial rites, chant of mass and murmur of confes- 
sional. Remember those momentous days, when Castle San Marco — standing here for the very main- 
tenance of Spain in North America — bore the brunt of well concerted assault. Build anew the shattered 
defenses; flood the moat; raise the draw-bridge; let fall the portcullis; mount the guard; fling bravely 
out from the rampart the banner of Castile; and let the artillery belch angry defiance of the hosts under 
the Red Cross. Hear the sharp word of command, the tread of battalions, the rattle of volley and the 



58 



The Standard Guide. 



screech of cannon ball. Look out, with the famishing- women and children, over the bay and beyond 
the camps of the besiegers on Anastatia, and scan the sea in vain for the coming of a friendly fleet; 
after the weeks of famine, hear at last, in the night, the shouts of rescuers, and then, the lessening 
drum beat of the departing British. Or, since you are an American, recall again those later years, when 
the soldiers of George the Third guarded Fort St. Marks and imprisoned Patriots languished in its 
cells; and keeping weary vigil with the white-haired Gadsden, let your patriotism kindle and in the 
damp-walled dungeon take on a brighter glow. So review all the stirring chronicle — 

Of sallies and retires, of trenches, tents, 

Of palisadoes, frontiers, parapets ; 

Of basilisks, of cannon, culverin, 

Of prisoners ransom'd, and of soldiers slain. 

And all the 'currents of a heady fight — 
and then may be known something of that story — which in truth is worthy to be known — of Fort Marion 
in St. Augustine. — " Old St. Augustine" Fort Marion. 

But however commonplace and practical may have been the real purpose and 
use of these underground chambers in old times, they are certainly uncanny and 
mysterious enough now, and when one follows the guide's torch from the dark rooms, 



throuarh the " dunsreon crawl. 




NICHE IX CHAPEL. 



nto the last gloomy pent recess, some weird tale of 
hapless victims entombed alive harmo- 
nizes with the flickering torch, the damp 
earthy odor, and the dimly seen smoke- 
begrimed encompassing walls. 

Facing the court on the north was the 
chapel (15). Its walls and ceiling and 
altar and niches are bright with mould 
and moss and lichen; strange mutations 
have come to town and fort since the 
• room was dismantled of its ornaments. 
The chapel was used for religious ser- 
vices as late as the civil war. In 1875 
it was converted into a school-room for 
the Western Indians who were confined 
here. The elaborate portico of the 
chapel was the most pretentious bit of 
architecture of the fort; but has so 
crumbled away that its form can no 
longer be traced. In the wall outside, 
above the chapel door, the French as- 
tronomers, who came here in 1879 to 
observe the transit of Venus, have left 
a marble tablet in commemoration of the 
visit. The inscription reads: " Plaque 
commemorative du passage de Venus 
observe au Fort Marion le 9 Ddcembre, 
18S2, par MM. le Colonel Perrier, le 
Commandant Bassat, le Capitaine Def- 
foges, de l'Armee Francaise." 



The Standard Guide. 



59 





mmmm 



FORT MARION — A CASEMATE DOUR. 



6o 



The Standard Guide. 



In the northwest bastion is another dark room (16). Some of these dark: 
dungeons of the fort have been used at different times for the confinement ofi 




SALLY-PORT AND WATCH TOWER. 



prisoners. Patriots from Charleston were confined here by the British in the Revo- 
lution; the Spaniards kept the famous outlaw McGirth in one of these cells five years; 
and there are old people in St. Augustine to-day who will tell, of pallid convicts led 



The Standard Guide 



61 




•from the fort dungeons to execution. At the close of the last war refractory soldiers 
were punished by solitary confinement in these cells. Casemate \oc is known as 
~"Coacoochee's cell; " and is famous as the one from which that chief escaped. Coa- 

coochee and Osceola, two of the most in- 
fluential chiefs of the Seminoles, in the war 
which began in 1S35, were captured, with 
a number of their followers, and imprisoned 
in the casemates at Fort Marion, whence 
they were to be taken to Fort Moultrie in 
Charleston harbor. Coacoochee resolved 
upon escape. His subsequent account of 
the affair was as follows: 

We had been growing sickly from day to day, and 
so resolved to make our escape, or die in the at- 
tempt. We were in a room, eighteen or twenty feet 
square. All the light admitted was through a hole 
(embrasure), about eighteen feet from the floor. 
Through this we must effect our escape, or remain 
and die with sickness. A sentinel was constantly 
posted at the door. As we looked at it from our 
oscf.ola. beds, we thought it small, but believed that, could 

we get our heads through we should have no further 
■nor serious difficulty. To reach the hole was the first object. In order to effect this, we from time to 

time cut up the forage-bags allowed us to sleep on, and made them into ropes. The hole I could not 

reach when upon the shoulder of my companion; but while standing upon his shoulder, I worked a 

knife into a crevice of the stonework, as far up as I could reach, 

and upon this I raised myself to the aperture, when I found that, 

with some reduction of person, I could get through. In order 

to reduce ourselves as much as possible, we took medicine five 

days. Under the pretext of being very sick, we were permitted 

to obtain the roots we required. For some weeks we watched 

the moon, in order that the night of our attempt it should be as 

dark as possible. At the proper time we commenced the medi- 
•cine, calculating upon the entire disappearance of the moon. 

The keeper of this prison, on the night determined upon to make 

the effort, annoyed us by frequently coming into the room, and 

talking and singing. At first we thought of tying him and put- 
ting his head in a bag; so that, should he call for assistance, he 

-could not be heard. We first, however, tried the experiment of 

pretending to be asleep, and when he returned to pay no regard 

to him. This accomplished our object. He came in, and went 

immediately out; and we could hear him snore in the immediate 

vicinity of the door. I then took the rope, which we had secreted 

• under our bed, and mounting upon the shoulder of my comrade, 

raised myself by the knife worked into the crevices of the stone, 

and succeeded in reaching the embrasure. Here I made fast the 

rope, that my friend might follow me. I then passed through 

the hole a sufficient length of it to reach the ground upon the 

•outside (about twenty-five feet) in the ditch. I had calculated 



.'---;-■'' •:;. 




COACOOCHEE, 



The Standard Guide. 



the distance when going for roots. With much difficulty I succeeded in getting my head through; for 
the sharp stones took the skin off my breast and back. Putting my head through first, I was obliged 
to go down head foremost, until my feet were through, fearing every moment the rope would break. 
At last, safely on the ground, I awaited with anxiety the arrival of my comrade. I had passed another 
rope through the hole, which, in the event of discovery, Talmus Hadjo was to pull, as a signal to me 
from the outside, that he was discovered, and could not come. As soon as I struck the ground, I took 
hold of the signal for intelligence from my friend. The night was very dark. Two men passed near 
me, talking earnestly, and I could see them distinctly. Soon I heard the struggle of my companion far 
above me. He had succeeded in getting his head through, but his body would come no farther. In 
the lowest tone of voice, I urged him to throw out his breath, and then try; soon after, he came tumbling 
down the whole distance. For a few moments I thought him dead. I dragged him to some water close 
by, which restored him; but his leg was so lame he was unable to walk. I took him upon my shoulder 
to a scrub, near the town. Daylight w'as just breaking, it was evident we must move rapidly. I caught 
a mule in the adjoining field, and making a bridle out of my sash, mounted my companion, and started 
for the St. John's River. The mule was used one day, but fearing the whites would track us, we felt 
more secure on foot in the hammock, though moving very slow. Thus we continued our journey five 
days, subsisting on roots and berries, when I joined my band, then assembled on the headwaters of the- 
Tomoka River, near the Atlantic coast. 

Coacoochee finally surrendered and was removed to Arkansas, where he took the 
leadership of his people. Osceola was removed to Fort Moultrie, Charleston, where 
shortly afterward he died.* Near the casemate through which Coacoochee made his. 
escape a fig tree is growing from a crevice in the wall. 

From the southeast corner of the court, to the right of the entrance hall, a stone 
ascent leads up to the platform (or terrepleiri) of the ramparts. This ascent, now a 
series of steps of recent construction, was originally an inclined plane, by which artil- 
lery was raised to the ramparts. 

At the outer angle of each bastion (B~) is a sentry box (W), that on the northwest 
(25 feet high) being also a watch-tower for looking to seaward. Distance from corner 




OUTLINE OF FORT MARION. 
A, covered way. B, bastion. C, curtain. G, glacis. I, inclined plane. M, moat. T, watch-tower. W, water battery.. 

to corner, 317 feet. The four walls of the fort between the bastions are the curtains. 
There are four equal bastions and four equal curtains. The walls of the fort are 
9 feet thick at base, 4>< at top, and 25 feet high, above the present moat level. 
Battlements similar to those on the other sides formerly defended the east (water) 
side of the ramparts. The bastions are filled with earth, and there is no foundation 

* Disputes over the boundaries of the Indian reservations and quarrels over fugitive slaves, which the Seminoles were 
accused of harboring, led to the Seminole War-the most costly and disastrous of the minor wars of the United States At 
the end of seven years, in 1842, the Indians were subdued, captured and transported to the reservation assigned them, where, 
the remnant of their tribe yet remains in the Indian Territory. 



The Standard Guide. 



for the romantic tale of a subterranean passageway which formerly led from the 
southwest bastion to a neighboring convent. The fort is surrounded by a moat, 40 




BASTIONS — BRIDGE TO RARBACAN — ANCIENT CHIMNEY. 

feet wide. It was formerly deeper than at present, had a perfectly cemented concrete 
floor, and was flooded from the bay at high tide. Running along the outer edge of the 



64 



The Standard Gttide. 




moat are narrow level spaces called covered-ways; and wider levels called places-of- 

anus, where artillery was mounted and the troops gathered, protected by the outer 

wall or parapet, 
from which slopes 
the glacis. The for- 
tification of stone 
{water battery) in 
front is of modern 
construction, hav- 
ing been built by 
the United States 
in 1842; and the 
small brick build- 
ing (hot shot fur- 
nace) in the moat 
between the east 
curtain and the 
water battery dates 
from 1844. In dif- 
ferent forms and 
bearing different 
names, St. Augus- 
tine's fort has been 
established more 
than three centu- 
ries; for two hun- 
dred years the fort 
was St. Augustine, 
and St. Augustine 
was Florida. First 
a rude and tempo- 
rary fortification of 
logs, it expanded in 
plan and magni- 
tude until devel- 
oped into the great 
stone fortress of 
1756. Menendez. 
the founder of St. 
Augustine, in 1565, 
utilized the Indian 
council-house as a 

defense against the threatened attack by the Huguenots from Fort Caroline on the St. 

John's River. After his heartless massacre of the French at Matanzas Inlet, the 




NORTHEAST TOWER. 



The Standard Guide, 



65 



Spaniard stood in just fear of a hostile fleet from France; and he set about building 
a regular fort of logs. This was the San Juan de Pinos, taken by Francis Drake. 

When the Span- 
iards discovered 
the coquina quar- 
ries on Anastasia 
Island, they under- 
took the construc- 
tion of a fort of 
stone. In those 
days the progress 
of such a work was 
slow; and when the 
Boucaniers came to 
St. Augustine in 
1665, the fort, al- 
though well under 
way, was not in a 
condition to offer 
resistance. Con- 
victs from Spain 
and Mexico, with 
Indians and slaves, 
toiled at the walls; 
and when Jonathan 
I Hckinson, the ship- 
wrecked Quaker 
from Philadelphia, 
came to St. Augus- 
tine in 1695, he 
found the walls 30 
feet high. This was 
the Fort San Marco, 
which Moore, the 
British Governor of 
Carolina, fruitlessly 
besieged in 1702, 
and Governor Og- 
lethorpe of Georgia 
cannonaded with- 
out effect for forty 
days in 1740. Fort 

San Marco was one of a series of fortifications which defended St. Augustine; other 
forts were just north of the town, west on the St. John's, and south at Matanzas Inlet. 




66 



The Standard Guide. 



The walls are built of coquina, which in its clay was considered a very excellent 
material for this purpose, since cannon balls would sink into the wall without shatter- 
ing it as they would harder stone. On the sea front of the southwest bastion are a 
number of crevices, which, according to local tradition, were caused by British cannon 
balls from the opposite shore when the fort was besieged by Oglethorpe. 

When the colony of Carolina was established the English grant extended so far 
south that it actually took in St. Augustine. The Spaniards, on the other hand, dis- 
puted England's right to any part of the 
continent whatever, and for the half 
century succeeding, Spanish expeditions 
sailed against the English colonies, and 
British expeditions came against St. 
Augustine. Governor Moore of Caro- 
lina led his forces against the town in 
1702, but was repulsed and driven back. 
When Oglethorpe brought out his 
Georgia colony, the Spaniards resented 
the new encroachments upon their ter- 
ritory, and the two colonies were at 
constant war. In 1740 Oglethorpe cap- 
tured the Spanish forts on the St. 
John's, and then, while his land forces 
besieged the town on the north, his 
naval contingent landed on Anastasia 
Island, and for forty days bombarded 
Fort San Marco. The townspeople took 
refuge in the fort, where they nearly 
starved before the siege was finally 
lifted. The Georgia general at length became discouraged and withdrew. 

In those days of crude weapons, the coquina bastions were capable of withstand- 
ing a much more serious attack than that of Oglethorpe's batteries; but the art of war 
has changed since then and Fort Marion's coquina would quickly be shattered by the 
artillery of the present. Shortly after coming into the possession of the United States, 
the fort was named Fort Marion, in honor of the famous Revolutionary hero, General 
-ancis Marion. 

Writing from St. Augustine, William Cullen Bryant criticised this as "a foolish change of name." 
But why foolish? If Moultrie is thus honored, and Sumter the " Game Cock, " why not Marion the 
"Swamp Fox?" Is it not the veriest romance of history that the Spanish fortress planted here by 
Menendez, the hunter of French Huguenots, should at last yield up its saintly name for that of a hero 
in whose veins flowed the blood of other Huguenot exiles? And is it not the final justice of time that 
the British stronghold, within whose dungeons rebellious Patriots were immured, should receive from 
the nation which those prisoners helped to establish, the honored name of one who endured with them 
the perils and privations of its cause, and won with them the final glorious triumph? — " Old Si. Augtu- 
Jinc," Fort Marion. 




GENERAL MARION. 



The Standard Guide. 



67 



Fort Marion has been dismantled. A few antiquated and long-silent cannon are 
preserved as suggestions of the warlike character of the surroundings, and here and 
there the rusted throat of a half-buried gun breaks the surface of the moat; while on 
the northwest crest of the glacis reposes a great cannon, about which cattle peacefully 
browse and children innocently play. 

I like to be alone upon the fort. Beautiful, dreadful, massive thing ! I like to play with it as 
ignorantly as a baby with an encyclopedia. I am grieved when " the season " sets in, and the tourist 
who knows things stands in groups with his wife and daughters, discoursing of the bastion and the demi- 
lune, of the ramparts and the dungeons, of the exact inscription upon the old, old coat of arms above 
the door (though I don't think he called it the door); which seemed so pretty till I heard him talk about 
it. f don't want to be instructed about that fort, ft spoils it all to know everything about it. ft is 
enough for me to know that I was never in a fort before, and that this (unless it be the ruin at Matanzas) 
is the oldest in the country, and that from its summit I can see the magnificent line of breakers over 
the bar, which shelters St. Augustine so tenderly that she sits almost like an inland city, widowed 
alike from the traffic and the terror of the sea. — Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Atlantic Monthly. 




)N ON NORTHWEST GLACIS 




THE SEA-WALL. 



EXTENDING from the water-batterv of Fort Marion south along- the 
17 \ ' 

water front of the town to the United States barracks, stands 

a sea-wall of coquina capped with New England granite. It 
affords a necessary protection against the encroachment of 
the sea. The site of St. Augustine is so low that under cer- 
tain conditions of wind and tide the waves would inundate 
much of the town. In heavy east storms the water dashes over the top of the wall. 
The need of such a barrier against the sea was recognized at an early time. 
There is a touch of the humorous side of history in the spectacle of Spain, having 
chosen this bit of Florida soil for a town, building first a huge fort to defend it from 
invaders, and then a great wall to protect it from the inroads of the sea. The records 
tell us that the soldiers volunteered their labor and contributed part of their pay 
toward the construction of the first sea-wall. They were wise enough in their day 
and generation to understand that if the town were swept away their lazy occupation 
of garrisoning it would tumble into the sea along with it. The first wall extended 
only to the center of the town; a plan of the town at the time of the British occupa- 
tion, given in Old St. Augustine, shows that the wall then terminated at the Plaza. 

The present wall was built by the 'United States, in 1835-42, as a complement to 
the repairs of Fort Marion, at an expense of $100,000. Length, % mile; height, 10 
feet; width of granite coping, 3 feet. 

At different points stairways descend to the boat landings at water level; and 
near the Plaza and the Barracks are recesses or basins where boats unload their 
freight and find shelter from storms. 

From the wall a charming prospect is afforded of the sail-dotted harbor, the shin- 
ing sand dunes of the beach, the green stretch of Anastasia with the lighthouse rising 
against the eastern sky, and the quivering mirage north and south. The wall itself 
harmonizes admirably with the fort, and its sweeping curves add not a little to the 
beauty of St. Augustine's water front, although the effect has been marred by inter- 
position of numerous wharves Writers of the Sidney Lanier school have not failed 
to extol the sea-wall as a promenade for the moonlight strolls of lovers; there is also 
revealed at every low tide abundant ocular evidence that from time immemorial 
prosaic souls (possibly the same lovers grown old) have found "over the sea-wall" 
a convenient dumping ground for old bottles, tin cans and other household refuse. 



The Standard Quit 



69 



Among the improvements which are projected for St. Augustine is the filling in 
of the sea-wall basin opposite the Plaza. If this shall be done, there will be pro- 




TREASUKY STREET FROM THE SEA-WAL1 



vided an unobstructed driveway along the bay from Fort Marion to the Barracks. 
Treasury street, famed among the narrow streets of the town, opens upon the sea- 
wall, just north of the Plaza. 



ST, FRANCIS BARRACKS. 



•& 




OMPLEMENTING the battlements and watch-towers of Fort 
Marion on the north, the St. Francis Barracks stand out- con- 
spicuously at the south end of the sea-wall facing the Matanzas. 
They are occupied by United States troops. The out-door 
concerts given by the military band, the dress-parades and the 
guard-mount at sunset on the parade in front of the barracks 
are among the attractions of St. Augustine. 

Almost continuously since it was founded by the mailed 
soldiers of Menendez, St. Augustine has been a military sta- 
tion. Under Spanish rule it was little else than a garri- 
son post. When the British came, they emulated the martial 
spirit of their predecessors, and on the plain south of the town, 
with bricks brought from the banks of the Hudson River, erected a huge barrack, 
which cost a tremendous sum, and shortly after completion went up in smoke. 

St. Francis Barracks take their name from the Franciscan convent, whose former 
site they occupy. The convent was abandoned when Florida was ceded to Great 
Britain in 1763; and when Spain resumed possession of the town, in 1783, it was 
utilized by the Spanish Governor as barracks for his troops. The old building has 
been greatly modified by the United States Government, although not entirely rebuilt; 
and some of the original coquina walls of the convent remain. 

To Florida with the adventurer had come the missionary; one to win treasure, the other to win 
souls. The gold-seeker returned from his quest chagrined; not so the Franciscan. He found here a 
Held vast beyond reckoning; and, waiting to be gathered, a harvest more precious than had been pictured 
in the fondest dream of his pious enthusiasm. The military prestige of Florida soon faded away, but 
rear bv year its religious importance increased; and ever, with the expansion of his work, the Francis- 
can's zeal grew more intense and his labors more devoted. The cou»try was in time erected into a 
religious province, with a chapter house of the Order of San Francisco at San Augustin; and thence the 
members went forth to plant the standard of their faith in the remotest wilderness. Far out on the 
border of savanna, in the depth of forest, and on the banks of river and lake, by the side of the Indian 
trails westward to the Gulf, north among the villages of Alachua, and south to everglade fastnesses; 
here and there, and everywhere that lost souls were worshipping strange gods, the Franciscan built his 
chapel, intrenched it round about with earthwork and palisade, and gathered the erring children of the 
forest to hear the wondrous story of the Cross. — " Old St. Augustine" The Franciscans. 

A short distance south of the Barracks is the Military Cemetery. An admission 



The Standard Guide. 




FRANCIS BARRACKS. 

pass is required and may be had on application to the adjutant of the post, whose 
office is opposite the Barracks. In the cemetery are the three low pyramids of 
masonry forming the tombs of officers and men who lost their lives in the Seminole 
War. The memorial shaft is commonly spoken of as " Dade's Monument," because 
more than one hundred of the soldiers interred here were those who perished in the 
" Dade Massacre." This was one of the most tragic incidents of the Seminole War. 

In August, 1835, Major Dade and a command of troops, no all told, were on their way from Fort 
Brooke to Fort King. At half past nine o'clock, Tuesday morning, August 28, they were marchino- 
through an open pine barren, four miles from the Great Wahoo Swamp. The bright 'sun was shining* 
Howers bloomed along the path; gay butterflies flitted about them; the silence was broken only by the 
.Bohan melody of the pines. The men were marching carelessly, with no suspicion of danger, where 
surely no foe could lurk. Suddenly, without an instant's warning-from pine, from palmetto scrub, 
from the very grass at their feet— burst upon them the shrill 
war-whoop, the flashing and crackling of rifles, and the whist- 
ling, deadly rain of bullets. Sixty of the troops fell mortally 
wounded. The rest rallied: trained the cannon, and attempted 
to form breastworks of logs; but in vain. In quick succession, 
one after another, they fell. Had the earth yawned to swallow 
them like the army of Korah, the obliteration could have been 
little more complete. Of the no, three, miserably wounded, 
dragged themselves away, two soon after to die of their wounds. 
— " Old St. Augustine," The Seminole. 



The pyramids are stuccoed and devoid of ornamentation. 
The inscriptions read: " Sacred to the memory of the Officers 
and Soldiers killed in battle and died on service during the 
Florida War." "This monument has been erected in token of respectful and affectionate remem- 
brance by their comrades of all grades, and is committed to the care and preservation of the garrison 
of St. Augustine," 




HARBOR AND BEACH. 



; §ffrr®\ HELTERED by the spit of land called the North Beach, and by 
•■■•-4*Kslli^fe' Anastasia Island, St. Augustine's harbor is a sheet of water 
; — -*"■••■ ^at w ..... admirabh adapted for pleasure sailing and rowing. These are 
■ ^^i ^$£00^--£ among the staple winter amusements. At the wharves will be 
''''■^■fSJpS'%. fgf found a large fleet of sail boats, which are safe and commodious; 
*' and they are manned by capable and trustworthy skippers, who 
display a high degree of skill in the handling of their boats. 
Most of the craft are of local production, and built on a model peculiar to the harbor. 
Usual rates of hire, 50 cents to $1.00 per hour. In addition to these boats for charter, 
there are usually here in winter sail and steam yachts from the North; and the pri- 
vate craft range all the way from the Minorcan fisherman's dugout (a survival of the 
ancient Florida Indian's rude log boat) and the clumsy wood-scows to the light and 
speedy naphtha launches, now coming into such common use as yacht tenders, which 
dart about the bay with the swiftness of a bird, the grace of a canoe, and the import- 
ance and business air of a steam tug towing a Cunarder. 

An afternoon afloat is likely to prove one of the most pleasant memories of a 
visit to St. Augustine. What with the changing landscape — a shifting panorama of 
water and land and sky — charming views of the town as seen from the bay, bright 
sails in the harbor, and multitudinous forms of marine life, there is always enough to 
interest and amuse. Fort Marion is well worth seeing from the water; the propor- 
tions of the fortification are hardly appreciated until one has approached it from the 
harbor which its artillery once defended. 

Extended excursions may be made to Matanzas; up the North River; and to 
Anastasia Island, Bird Island and the Beaches, called North and South with reference 
to the harbor entrance. North Beach is a term applied to the shores of both ocean 
and harbor and the long narrow spit of land formed by them. Along the shores 
extend irregular lines of sand dunes, which are ever shifting in the wind and chang- 
ing their shape, like the northern snowdrifts they so closely resemble. From the bay 
or from the opposite shore the North Beach presents a scene of rare beauty, with its 
narrow strip of shining silver sand between the blue of the water and the deeper blue 
of the sky. Arrived at the shore, one finds half-buried wrecks and sea-wrack to 
dream over, shells to gather, innumerable forms of curious marine life to investigate, 
and the never ending, always new study of wave motion and color. 





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The Standard Guide. 



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FORT MARION FROM THE NORTH. 



Oh, what shells ! Incredible that they should be selling for large prices by the quart, like candy 
in the Boston shops. They lie brilliant, vital, it seems sentient, beneath our touch, like flowers. We 
beach the Elizabeth upon the silver bar, and wander like children among them. At first I object to 
gathering them, as I do to rifling a garden; and to the last I find myself turning out of my way to avoid 
stepping upon the perfect and rich-tinted things; as if they had blood and could be hurt. — Elizabeth 
Stuart Phelps. 

At sunset the Florida seashore takes on a peculiar beauty. Surf and beach are 
transplendent with the soft shades and delicate tints of the sky; the atmosphere is 
aglow with color, and there comes to one the novel experience of not alone beholding 
the distant glories of the west, but of actually standing in and being surrounded by 
the effulgence of the dying day. 

But the average St. Augustine skipper is not inclined to linger for sunset effects 
on the North Beach; the one practical consideration with him is that when the sun 
goes down the sea breeze will go down too, and his boat and party will be becalmed; 
experience has taught him the wisdom of an early return to town. 

The porpoises which frequent the harbor in great numbers have always been a 
conspicuous feature of these waters. Away back in 1563, before the Spaniards had 
founded St. Augustine, the French explorers who came here found the porpoises (or 
dolphins) so numerous that they gave to the river the name Rivih-c dcs Dauphines, 



The Standard Guide. 



75 



the River of Dolphins, and by this name it is set down on the old maps. Among the 
Florida pictures drawn by the French artist, Jacques Le Moyne, who accompanied 
that expedition, is one which represents the French ships here at the River of Dol- 
phins. This drawing is one of the five De Bry plates reproduced in Old St. Augus- 
tine, from which volume we borrow the copy on the preceding page. 




ATLANTIC 



PLAN OF HARBOR AND REACHES. 



ST. ANASTASIA ISLAND. 




FRONT of the town, between bay and ocean, lies the- 
Island of St. Anastasia. It is a favorite resort for excur- 
sion parties, and has many attractions for the tourist. 
The most pleasant time for a visit is the afternoon. The 
route is by ferryboat from Central Wharf and then bv 
railway from the opposite shore across to the beach. 
The light-house is usually open to visitors; and when 
convenient to do so, the keeper, Mr. W. A. Harn, or assist- 
ant, will accompany parties to the tower, whence a magni- 
ficent and far-extending view is afforded over sea and 
land. The light-house is 150 feet in height from base to light tower, the lamp being- 
165 feet above sea level. Eight flights of spiral staircases lead to the tower. The 
light, technically classed as of the first-order, is a fixed white and revolving or flash 
light, flashing once every 3 minutes, visible 19 miles. The lamp itself is stationary, 
and the actual intensity of its flame does not change. The variability of the light is- 
secured by the revolution of a glass lantern provided with a series of powerful lenses- 
or gigantic bull's-eyes, each one sending out a great beam of light. The constant 
and steady beam from each lense revolves with the lantern. From St. Augustine at 
night this beam may distinctly be seen stretching out into the darkness, as it wheels- 
in mighty revolutions about the tower. 

The purpose of the variability of the light is to render it distinguishable from 
other lights on the coast. Thus, while the St. Augustine light is a fixed white light 
varied by a flash every 3 minutes, the St. John's River light, the next one north, is a 
fixed white light; and the Cape Canaveral light, the next one south, flashes even- 
minute. The black and white spiral stripes, which make the tower look like a gro- 
tesque Brobdingnagian barber's pole, serve to distinguish it from others by daylight: 
the tower of the St. John's River light is red, that of the Cape Canaveral light has 
black and white horizontal bands. 

The present light-house was built in 1872-3, to take the place of an older coquina 
structure, whose ruins may be seen on the shore a short distance northeast. The 
latter has commonly, though incorrectly, been called the "old Spanish light- house/" 



The Standard Gtiide. 



7; 



Its original purpose and use were not for a light-house, but a lookout or watch-tower, 
"where is always watch kept to see if any Ships are coming from Sea, and as many 
Ships as many Flaggs are hung out that ye Citty may know it." The history of the 

old time lookout on Anastasia is intimately con- 
nected with the history of St. Augustine. It 
was one of a series of watch-towers and sentry- 
boxes established by the Spaniards along the 
coast, whence the watchmen signaled to the 
town the welcome coming of ships from Old 
Spain, or the dreaded approach of a hostile fleet. 
A token of weal or woe, in those days the signal 
flag on Anastasia Island was as eagerly watched 
by the Spaniards on shore as ever in these times 
the light is looked for by ships at sea. Away 
back in 1586, thirty years after the town was 
established, the rude wooden scaffolding which 
then stood here, attracted the notice of the Eng- 
lish sea-king, Francis Drake, sailing along this 
coast with his fleet of high-pooped ships, on his 
way home from pillaging the cities of the Spanish 
Main; and he tarried long enough to ransack 
St. Augustine, and destroy by fire what he could 
not bear off. 

After three days spent in watering our Ships, wee 
departed now the second time from this Cape of S. An- 
thony, the thirteenth of May, and proceeding- about the 
Cape of Florida, wee never touched anywhere; but coasting 
alongst Florida and keeping the shore still in sight, the 28 
of May, early in the morning, wee descried on the shore a 
place built like a Beacon, which was indeede a scaffold 
upon foure long mastes raised on ende, for men to discover 
to the seaward, being in the latitude of thirtie degrees, or 
very neere thereunto. Our l'innesses manned and com- 
ming to the shore wee marched up alongst the river side 
to see what place the enemie held there, for none amongst 
us had any knowledge thereof at all. — Thomas Cates's 
Narrative of Drake's Expedition, " Old St. Augustine." 

On numerous subsequent occasions the town 
was thrown into consternation by the signal flag 
telling of an enemy's coming. 

And so it came to pass that, one line morning in the 
year 1665, the sentinel in the watch-tower opposite San 

, Augustin, having descried to the south a Boucanier sail, 

TOMB ON FISH'S ISLAND. . B S . . , . ' 

THE Ol.n LIGHT-HOUSE tired the alarm-gun and hoisted the signal flag. Hearing 

A BIT ok SHORE. and seeing which, the distracted inhabitants took to their 




78 



The Standard Gtiide. 



heels — the garrison after them; and all together fled into the interior. — " Old St. Augustine," The 
Boucaniers. 

In 1742 when the Georgia forces were led against St. Augustine by Oglethorpe, 
they captured the lookout — then built of coquina — and established their batteries on 
the Island here, on the western shore 
opposite the fort, and across on the 
North Beach. Shortly after Florida 
came into the possession of the United 
States, the Government remodeled and 
practically rebuilt the old Spanish look- 
out, and converted it into a light-house. 
Its situation was then at some distance 
back from the shore (at the beginning 
of this century the distance to the look- 
out from the beach had been a half- 
mile) ; but with the gradual encroach- 
ment of the waves the shore was eaten 
away, and the distance from light to 
beach grew less and less, until the im- 
pending fate of the building was so 
clearly foreseen that the new light- 
house was built, and the old one, no 
longer tenable, was deserted. The sea 
at length reached the coquina founda- 
tion ledge of the ancient tower, and 
one June night in 1880, in the height 
of a furious tempest, the walls swayed, 
tottered and fell with a crash into the 
sea. The coquina blocks of the tower 
and the keeper's house lie in a mass of 
ruins where they fell; and the site, 
above which in times past the welcome 
beacon flamed for ships off the Florida 
coast, is now submerged by the incom- 
ing tide. 

We landed and walked to the light-house 
to wait until the rain was over. Here a Span- 
iard, whose name was Andro, with his family, 
the eldest of whom was a beautiful, modest, 
dark-eyed little muchacha (young girl), just 
budding into her fourteenth year, held his deso- 
late abode, defying alike the tempests and the 
Indians in his fortified castle. Having spent 
an nour or two beneath the hospitable tower of st. AUGUSTINE LIGHT. 




The Standard Guide. 



79 



Signor Andro and made a delicious repast on dried fish, which garnished his hall from one end to the 
other, eked out with cheese and crackers, brandy, fruits, and a bottle or two of Frontignac, and, after 
exchanging soft words and glances for rosy blushes and magnolia flowers with the pretty Isabel, we left 
the light-house for a tour on the island to go drumming. — "Sketch of Seminole War." (1836). 

The sea shore of the Island is known as the South Beach. Opposite is North 
Beach; and to the right, seaward, are the great stretches of sand which form Bird 

Island. This island is of recent formation; 
twenty years ago it was at low tide an 
insignificant tract of barren sand, much 
frequented by waterfowl, and at high tide 
almost covered by the sea. The St. Aug- 
ustine bar is constantly shifting. Many 
vessels have been lost here; and the rem- 
nants of the wreck of some unfortunate 
craft may often be seen from the shore. 
Among the records of such disasters is that 
of d. Spanish ship with its passengers, a 
company of Franciscans, who were " swal- 
lowed up by the sea in sight of the convent 
at St. Augustine " {Old St. Augustine, p. 67). 
Latrobe, who was here in 1833, records 
that one of the sand dunes of the beach 
was surmounted by a cross set up in mem- 
ory of certain nuns who had met a similar 
fate here. An incident of less sombre hue 
is that which is related of Roy Mcintosh, an 
officer of the British Army, who was active 
here in Revolutionary times. Mcintosh 
was in command of a vessel which was bringing supplies to the British in St. Augus- 
tine. When crossing the bar the ship struck once, and again, when, apprehending 
that the pilot was a Patriot in disguise and intended to wreck the craft, the impetuous 
Scotchman drew his dirk, and, holding it aloft above the man at the helm, swore with 
a mighty oath that he would drive it to the hilt if the ship touched bottom again. 

The coquina formation of Anastasia Island is well shown in the ledges at the 
ruins of the old light-house. The stratafication may be studied here, but is seen 
better at the quarries, southwest of the light-house (i^m.). Coquina (Spanish, 
coquina, signifying a shellfish) is a conglomeration of shells and shell fragments of 
great variety of form, color and size. Ages ago these were washed up in enormous 
quantities by the waves, just as other masses of similar material are now left on the 
beach, where one may walk for miles through the loose fragments which, under 
favorable conditions, would in time form coquina stone. When these shell deposits 
were cut off from the sea by intervening sand bars, like Bird Island, they were in 
course of time partially dissolved by rain water, and firmly cemented together in a 
compact mass of shell-stone. 




FRANCIS DRAKE. 



8o 



The Standard Guide. 



The coquina stone is soft, and very easily quarried. It is cut out in blocks to 
suit the needs of the builder. It hardens upon exposure to the atmosphere; and was 





once extensively used as a building material. The city gateway, the sea-wall and 
Fort Marion are of coquina. 



The Standard Guide. 81 

From Old Spain and the Havannah the cartel-ships brought fresh bands of convicts, to join the cap- 
tive Indians in their toil at the fortifications; year after year the chain-gangs hewed the blocks of coquina 
shell-stone from the quarries of St. Anastasia Island; the galley-slaves ferried their burdens over the 
Matanzas; and tier upon tier rose the curtains and bastions, and above them the ramparts and battle- 
ments, of Fort San Marco. — " Old St. Augustine" British Cannon Balls. 

At the southern extremity of St. Anastasia Island is the inlet of Matanzas, often 
visited because of its historical associations, its ruined Spanish fort and its fishing 
grounds. A hotel is maintained there. The inlet and adjacent waters are favorite 
resorts for fishing parties. 

The trip to Matanzas is not without interest. As the boat leaves the barracks 
on the right, shortly beyond on the left bank of the river, a beautiful site is pointed 
out as Fish's Island, an estate which has been in the possession of one family for more 
than a hundred years. The original proprietor was Jesse Fish, who came here from 
Flatbush, N. Y., near the close of the first Spanish supremacy (ante 1763), lived here 
during the English occupation, and remained when the Spanish returned again. His 
tomb is still shown, surrounded by a bower of orange trees. "Fish's Island " is actu- 
ally a part of Anastasia Island. 

The evening proving squally, we were unable to recross the Matanza River, and took up our 
abode for the night in the ancient and venerable fabric erected by the old Fish, who was the original 
proprietor of the island, * * * and made improvements which have hardly been exceeded in any 
part of the Province. Here are the remains of perhaps the most celebrated orange grove in the world. 
Some trees still remain that are 30 feet in height and still retain a portion of their golden fruit. But all 
is now in ruins. Two generations have passed away. We were very politely entertained by two hand- 
some young ladies, the grandchildren of the above mentioned Fish, — William Baldwin (1S17). 

Five miles below St. Augustine, on the right bank, is Moultrie. In British times this was the site 
of Lieut. -Gov. John Moultrie's plantation, Buena Vista. Moultrie was one of the planters who came 
here from South Carolina when Florida was ceded by Spain to Great Britain. At the time of the Revolu- 
tionary War he sided with the British, but his brother, William Moultrie, of Charleston, was equally 
active on the other side, and was one of the American prisoners brought to St. Augustine in 1780. A 
strange meeting it must have been, this of Patriot brother and Loyalist brother. When Florida was 
ceded to Spain once more, John Moultrie refused to live under the Spanish flag, but abandoned his 
beautiful plantation and left the province. Like other Florida plantations in those days, this was forti- 
fied. Later there was a regular work of defense called Fort Moultrie. One of the famous treaties 
made by the United States with the Seminole Indians was signed here in 1823; and the Government's 
alleged violations of the Fort Moultrie agreement was one of the prime causes of dissatisfaction that led 
to the disastrous Seminole War 

The remains of the Spanish fort are seen on the right bank as the boat approaches 
Matanzas. Its ruins are among the most picturesque in Florida. In the early morn- 
ing and at sunset the fort and its surroundings present a scene of beauty well worth 
the journey to behold. The fort is of coquina, and was built to defend St. Augustine 
from the approach of an enemy by way of Matanzas Inlet. It was among the Spanish 
fortifications enumerated by Oglethorpe when he wrote to the King of England for 
instructions to proceed against and destroy St. Augustine. During the second Spanish 
supremacy, Matanzas fort was occupied by a garrison of negro troops. 



82 



The Standard Gm'de. 



On the morning of the 6th, we decamped from St. Augustine, and, embarking in a snug canoe 
boat, ascended Matanza River south, between Fish's Island and the Main. At a few miles distance, 
on the western shore, we passed an elevated spot which once contained the habitation of Governor 
Moultrie. A small cabin and a few date trees are all that appear to mark the place where the hand of 
high cultivation and improvement once extended. At the southern extremity of Fish's Island, and near 
Matanza bar, stands a Spanish tower, where a corporal's guard is stationed to look at folks as they pass 
by. — William Baldwin (1S1.7). 

The inlet of Matanzas takes its name from the Spanish word matanza, signifying 
slaughter, in commemoration of the massacre of the Huguenots which occurred here 

in 1565. No event in 



American history possesses 
more of tragedy and pathos 
than the martyrdom of 
those Frenchmen, who had 
left their homes in France 
to establish in the new 
world a refuge from the 
religious persecutions of 
their native land, but found 
in Florida the intolerance 
from which they had fled, 
and perished at last by the 
hand of a bigot. 

The French, stationed at 
their Fort Caroline, on the 
River May (St. John's), 
having left a few of their 
number to garrison the 
fort, set sail against the 
Spaniards, arrived off the 
bar of St. Augustine, and 
were driven to the south by 
a storm. The Spanish leader Menendez then led a force overland to the St. John's, 
surprised Fort Caroline and killed most of the garrison — a few of the French 
escaping to their ships. Upon his return to St. Augustine Menendez learned that the 
French fleet had been wrecked. He proceeded south to this inlet, discovered the 
shipwrecked Frenchmen on the other side, and by false promises induced them to 
surrender and deliver up their arms. Then he sent them boats, brought them over, 
in small bands at a time, bound them, blindfolded them, led them behind the sand 
hills, and in the name of religion put them to death. The shores of the inlet have 
been greatly modified by the action of the sea in the three hundred years which have 
elapsed since that occurrence; it is useless to speculate as to the exact locality where 
the tragedy took place. 




RUINS OF THE MATANZAS FORT. 




AS A HEALTH RESORT. 

From a paper by Dr. Horace Caruthf.rs, in the "Forest and Stream." 

PRACTICAL experience of many winters enables me to say there is 
no place better adapted to health or pleasure than St. Augustine. It 
is easily reached by steamers or by elegant vestibule cars in little 
over one day from New York. The city is situated on a peninsula, 
almost surrounded by salt water; indeed it is, at very high tides, 
almost an island. The fact that the place is washed on all sides by 
the ocean tides guarantees the sanitary condition to be as perfect as any natural 
locality can be; and it absolutely precludes the possibility of malaria — a case of which 
disease I have never met, originating in the city. In addition to its possessing these 
natural advantages, those in authority spare no efforts nor expense in adopting all 
artificial means known to sanitarians to add to the health of the favorable locality. 
The elements so essential to perfect health are abundant, in bright sunshine, pure 
bracing sea air and abundance of water, while the most cheerful and choicest society 
makes the ancient city the most desirable winter resort in this country. 

I have known many men, women and children who have renewed their seriously 
damaged constitutions in Florida; and for those suffering from overwork, insomnia, 
nervous prostration and all its sad train, of symptoms, I know of no more desirable 
place than St. Augustine. Children recovering from pneumonia, diphtheria, scarlet 
fever and whooping cough find a perfect climate for outdoor life and rapid con- 
valescence, without the danger of relapse, so common in a variable Northern climate. 
For nearly forty years I have recommended the climate of Florida to my patients, and 
I am happy to say many of these still thank me for sending them away from this 
Northern climate, which is as trying as any known to the professien. Scarlet fever 
and measles are not dreaded by the parents and physicians of St. Augustine; and 
diphtheria is almost unknown. A few years ago I was asked to see a child recently 
arrived, supposed to be suffering from that dread disease. The physician long resi- 
dent had never seen a case. The child was removed a few miles out of town, and 
but one other took the disease, a playmate of the first. An honored and lamented 
physician of St. Augustine, the late Dr. Peck, told me some years ago, when I was 
expressing anxiety about some cases of scarlet fever, not to be alarmed; that the 
disease never assumed a dangerous type in that climate, and that it very seldom 
resulted in death; it responded quickly to treatment, and was seldom followed by 
those dangerous sequels so dreaded in a Northern climate. He stated the remark- 
able fact that years earlier they were visited by an epidemic of scarlet fever, when he 
attended one hundred and twenty children, without losing more than a single patient; 
and this one death was owing to other complications. There is no other way of 
accounting for such a history of such a disease, except the perfect climate. Some 
winters ago I received a little patient from New York with chronic pneumonia follow- 



"^ 




^-'-iTJ^ ^ifeia^ 



The Standard Guide. 



35 



ing an unusually severe whooping cough; and in a very short time the little girl 
recovered completely, renewing the roses in her cheek: and her buoyant, childlike 
spirits. She returned with her mother, who was summoned to attend her husband 
suffering with pneumonia, in the month of March — much again t my advice, but for- 
tunately without serious consequences. Pneumonia is seldom ~een in St. Augustine, 
and the resident physicians are almost unacquainted with the disease and have no 
desire to attend it. The absence and the mild form of the diseases mentioned can be 
accounted for on no other grounds than the salubrity of the climate. 

If there is the slightest possibility of any one laboring with the first symptoms of 
consumption being benefited by climate it will be accomplished in Florida. A gentle- 
man who was a martyr to asthma all his life, possessing a beautiful home near Phila- 
delphia, told me he could find no comfort in life but in two localities, Newport in 
summer and St. Augustine in winter. 

My own personal experience in the beneficial effects of the climate of St. Augus- 
tine makes me the more earnest in recommending it to all who may be suffering from 
overwork. After a laborious life of more than thirty years in the climate of New 
York, on the Hudson River, I broke down completely, and had insomnia to a fearful 
degree, bordering on insanity. Old professional friends advised me to visit Florida. 
When I arrived in the quaint old city one Christmas Eve I was nearly exhausted. 
I could not walk a mile, and only with great fatigue at all. Appetite was fitful, energy 
gone, and though I was longing for rest, yet I dreaded the experience of a night of 
sleeplessness. One who has never had the misery of such a state of health, can form 
no conception of such a deplorable condition. I began improving the first week, 
walking with less fatigue daily, and improved in appetite and spirits, and in six weeks 
I could tramp with dog and gun twenty miles. It was truly a renewal of life, instead 
of my life work being abandoned, I put on harness again and began to offer aid and 
encouragement to all who, like myself, had become discouraged. 




THE FLUKIOA HUUSE. 




FLORAL CALENDAR. 



ECAUSE of the pretty fable that the name Florida was given 
,. to a ''Land of Flowers," and because the tropical features 
of the northern portion of the State have been grossly 
" exaggerated, most persons who come to Florida in winter 
» are apt to be disappointed when they find the floral dis- 
play less profuse and brilliant than they anticipated. 
They forget that like the North, the South also has its seasons, 
which are marked in the same manner if in less degree. Spring is the time of burst- 
ing bud and blossoms; summer of luxuriant and maturing vegetation; autumn of the 
falling leaf; while in winter much of the Florida verdure is sere and brown, the 
deciduous trees are bare of leaves, and beneath the sombre drapings of tillandsia — as 
in the North beneath the sheet of snow — the earth rests and recuperates. 

There is yet an abundance of foliage and color. Lemon, orange and lime, 
oleander, olive and magnolia, date palm, palmetto and bay are evergreen; rose gar- 
dens are in perennial bloom; and if one have an eye for wild flowers, their number 
and variety will be found surprisingly rich and varied, even in the winter months. 
Of the three hundred and seventy-five species to be collected within a radius of 
twenty-five miles, more than one hundred may be gathered in the winter season. 
The climate is hardly tropical enough for successful culture of the banana. The 
orange blossoms in the last of February or the first of March; the fruit ripens from 
November 15 to December 1, and will hang on the trees until the middle of the 
following May; there are thus at the same time on the orange tree, amid the glossy 
green of the foliage, white blossoms and ripe golden fruit. 

Among the different roses, as noted in one rose garden on Cedar street, are the 
following: Constant bloomers and most hardy — Pink daily, Glorie de Rosamond, 
climbing daily and blush roses. Constant bloomers (except in frosty weather) — 
America, Arch Duke Charles, Aline Sisley, Baron Alexander de Vrints, Agrippina, 
Comtesse Riza du Pare, Cloth of Gold, Duchesse de Brabant, Bougere, Isabella 
Sprunt, La Princess Vera, James Sprunt, Lamarque, Lucullus, Mad. Lawrence, Mad. 
Camille, Malmaison, Rubens, Marechal Neil, Perle de Lyon, Reine Marie Henriette, 
Sofrano, Beau Carmine, Solfaterre, Cels Multiflora, Doctor Berthet, Laurette, Louis 
Richard, Estella Pradel, La Grandeur, La Sylphide, Cornelia Cook, La France, 
Queen of Lombardy, Catherine Mermet, Perle des Jardins, Mad. Cecile Bruner, 



The Standard Gtiide. 



8/ 



Triumph d'Angers, Mad. Joseph Schwartz, Letty Coles, Amazone, Duchesse of Or- 
leans, Queen of France. Among' other garden flowers the bignonia and opoponax. 
are in constant bloom. 

The following list, which is not intended to be complete, gives the flowering of 
only some of the more conspicuous of Florida flowers: 



Wild Flowers. 

January. — Blue and white Violets, creeping- Houstonia, 
late Asters and early yellow Jessamine. 

February. — In wet pine barrens: Utricularia, Violets, 
daisy-like Chaptalia and Pinguicula. In low woods: Yellow 
Jessamine, Florida Hawthorn (Cratcegus glandulosa), and 
Wild Plum. 

March. — In wet pine barrens: Huge Thistles (used for 
making pompons), Pinguiculas, Andromedas, Violets and 
Sundews; and the two orchids, Calapogon and Pogonia. 
Beside streams: Azalea, Dogwood and Viburnum. In dry 
barrens: Lupines, Baptisia, Andromedas, Huckleberries, late 
Yellow Jessamine and Ascyrum (" St. Peter's- Wort "). 

April. — In wet barrens: Sarracenia ("Pitcher plant"), 
Sundew, Iris and Pogonia. In dry barrens: Milkweeds, 
Polygalas, Vaccinium Arboreum ("Sparkle berry"), Coral 
Plant or "Cherokee Bean" (Erythrina), and " Horse Nettle." 

May. — Spanish Bayonet (Yucca), Magnolia, "Loblolly" 
or Sweet Bay Magnolia, Wild Calla, Rhexia (" Deer Grass"), 
and Tillandsia, or " Spanish Moss," (which is not a moss but 
an air-plant). 

Summer. — Three kinds of Palmetto, Prickly Ash, Prickly 
Pear, "Spider Lilies," "Matrimony," Wild Rose, Wild 
Canna, Coreopsis, Lobelias, Passion Flower, six Polygalas, 
Lily, "Beach Grass" or "Sea Oats," etc.: among the 
orchids three Gymnadenias, four Platantheras, and an Epi- 
dendrum. 

Autumn. — Four or five Liatris, several Golden Rods, Bac- 
charis, Asters, Sabbatias, Eupatorium. 

December. — Asters, Baccharis, scarlet berries of the Ilex 
cassine (" Cassine," " Christmas-berry"), Ilex opaca or Holly 
and red and black berries of the Wild Smilax. 




BLOSSOM OF THE BANANA. 



In Cultivated Grounds. 

February. — "Cherry-Lauiel," wrongly called "Wild Olive," Orange, Opoponax and Cherokee 
Rose. 

march. — Vetch, Mexican j^oppy or Axgemone, Amaryllis Atamasco, Linaria, Sorrel, Cherokee 
Rose, Opoponax and Yellow Pyri jpappus. 

April. — White and pink Oleanders, Pomegranate, Woodbine, Honeysuckle, Sweet Olive, Chero- 
kee Rose. 

Summer. — Century Plant and Date Trees, Crepe Myrtle and Pride of India, Yellow Elder and 
Parkinsonia, wrongly called " Mexican Chapparal." 

The Japan Plum (Eryobotria japonica) blossoms from October to December. M. C. R. 



GUN AND ROD. 




AME and fish have always been among the attractions of St. 
Augustine; and, although the supply has been diminished 
of late years, there is still abundant reward for the pur- 
suit. Sportsmen and anglers who visit the Rangeleys, the 
Adirondacks and the St. Lawrence in summer, repair to 
Florida in the winter. There are men, who when fish are 
to be caught in Florida waters would no more stay in the 
North than the robins and bluebirds. Dr. C. J. Kenworthy, 
of Jacksonville, himself an ardent angler, tells a good story of a New York physician 
who, some winters ago, when there was yellow fever in one of the Gulf Coast towns, 
deliberately set out to run the quarantine and make his way into the fever district 
because it was time for fish to rise to his fly. 

Rod and reel, gun and field dogs are familiar objects in St. Augustine. Among 
the sporting dogs remembered by many quail hunters was the well known Bran. 
This dog was once, while hunting quail, struck by a rattlesnake. He was saved by 
the skillful treatment of Dr. Ff. Caruthers, but only to meet a fate as harsh, for Bran 
perished in the flames where he was chained in the great St. Augustine Hotel fire of 
1887. The smoking room of the Ponce de Leon Hotel counts among its ornaments a 
magnificent set of antlers, which bear testimony to the luck of a Tarrytown, New- 
York, physician, to whom is credited the unusual experience of having brought down 
his deer, on an Adirondack runway, with a shotgun, loaded with No. 4 shot for 
grouse. Florida deer are of smaller size than the northern deer, but they are built to 
go just as fast. 

Yesterday morning (reports a Jacksonville paper) as the first train out from the ancient city on the 
Jacksonville, St. Augustine & Halifax River Railway was passing the hammock known as Twelve-Mile 
Swamp, a fine buck leaped upon the track about a hundred yards ahead of the engine and started down 
the track. Engineer Peoples saw him and gave the salute. Then he opened the valves and the race 
began. He sent a man through the train to borrow a pistol with which to shoot the animal as soon as 
the engine should have come close enough for that purpose, but no pistol was found, and the engineer 
had to content himself with a dead run, and if the deer refused to clear the track to treat him like a cow 
and run him down. For several miles the race was an interesting one, the train going at the rate of 
twenty-five an hour and slowly gaining on his buckship. As the train approached Sampson, about 
twenty miles from this city, when it was within a few feet of the deer, he leaped from the track and 
made off into the dense forest. 



The Standard Guide. 89 

No one ever thinks of setting out from St. Augustine on a deer hunt without the 
pilotage of the veteran James Ponce, a local hunter, who knows every foot of game 
ground within forty miles around. Ponce killed four bears in one day in July, 1888. 
The records of St. John's county for 1887 show that in that year bounties were paid 
on seventy wildcats and four bears — a formidable showing of "varmints" for the 
oldest settled county in the United States. Rabbits (hares) and squirrels are numer- 
ous. Anastasia Island was once noted for its supply of rabbits; and the old joke 
was current, of the man who failed to kill any rabbits because there were so many 
they confused his aim and he could not decide which one to shoot first. 

Quail are found in fair supply within short distances north, west and south; and 
wild turkeys are brought into town by the market hunters. The water and shore 
birds, ducks of many varieties, snipe, plover, curlew and others, have been practically 
exterminated by relentless shooting; and with them have gone the birds of plume. 
The feathered life, once a charming feature of St. Augustine, has almost disappeared. 
A few years ago great numbers of beautiful fowl frequented marsh, bay, beach and 
sand bar; but the monomaniacs, who conceive that all feathered creatures were made 
expressly as targets for bullet and shot, have pursued the birds with such scandalous 
industry that practical extermination is the result. Buzzards, carrion crows, ospreys 
and gulls remain, but even these are harried by the harbor gunners possessed by an 
indecent mania to kill something. The naturalist Audubon visited St. Augustine 
in 1831-32. Among the plates of his great work the portrait of the Caracara eagle 
was figured from a specimen which he discovered on the marshes north of the 
city in company with a flock of buzzards feeding on a carcass. After several futile 
endeavors to secure the much coveted prize, the chagrined ornithologist had to 
abandon the pursuit, but a native gunner was more successful. Audubon's plate of 
the greenshank sandpiper represents the bird standing on the glacis of Fort Marion, 
and the old fort, the bay and the town make up a charming picture. Because of their 
services as scavengers the buzzards are protected by a city ordinance; and another 
ordinance forbids all shooting on land or water within city limits. 

The unlovely alligator is represented at St. Augustine chiefly in infantile stages 
of discouraged development in the curiosity shops, waiting to be done up in segar 
boxes and mailed to the north. Wilder and more ferocious specimens are occasion- 
ally encountered in adjacent waters. The alligator holds on with most commendable 
tenacity, despite the fact that every man's hand is against him, and always has been 
against him, if we are to credit Le Moyne, who came here with the French in 1563. 

In the Brevis Narratio is given a drawing of the native Florida mode of hunting, and it is de^ 
scribed as follows: They wage war on the crocodiles in this manner: By the bank of the river they 
build a little hut full of chinks and holes, in which is stationed a sentinel who can hear and see the 
crocodiles a great way of. Pressed by hunger they come up out of the water in search of prey, failing 
to find which they give forth a horrible roar that may be heard for half a mile. Then the sentinel calls 
the others who are ready; and ten or twelve of them, bearing a huge pole, hurry to intercept the 
gigantic monster (his jaws expanded to seize and swallow some one of them), and with great agility, 
holding the sharp end of the pole as high as possible, they plunge it into his maw, whence because of 
its roughness and the scaly bark he cannot eject it. Then turning the crocodile over on his back, they 
belabor his belly, which is softer, with clubs, and shoot arrows into it and open it; the back is impen- 



go 



The Standard Guide. 



etrable because of the hard scales, the more so if it be an old one. This is the Indians' way of hunt- 
ing crocodiles, to whom they are such inveterate foes that night and day they are on the watch for them, 
not less than we for our most hostile enemies. 

According to the artist's delineations of the mammoth specimens found here in 
those good old times, three hundred years ago, their descendants are certainly a sorry 
and degenerate race. But no one was ever heard to complain of the small propor- 
tions of an alligator he had killed; they are all huge and savage in the telling; it 
takes a very small saurian to make a big story; and men are living to-day who 
could give Le Moyne points on Florida alligators. 
, -™__™,r...- II III i In ml lll In M III I' III! 




INDIAN MODE OF HUNTING ALLIGATORS IN FLORIDA. 
From Le MoynSs Narrative of the French Expedition in 1563, 

The list of fishes taken in the vicinity is a generous one. Sheepshead are caught 
off the St. Sebastian bridge, from the docks, and wherever there are submerged 
timbers or rocks. Favorite fishing grounds are at Matanzas. Baits used: clam, crab, 
fiddler, conch; the best time for fishing is from half- flood to high water. The whit- 
ing is baited for with clam, crab or pieces of mullet or other fish. Sea bass, or channel 
bass (also called redfish), are in great abundance in summer, and in fair supply in 
spring, when they are caught in the surf with rod or hand-line. The rods are employed 
chiefly by anglers from abroad. The local method is for the fisherman to wade out 
into the surf, having his line coiled to run freely from his left hand, then, swinging 
bait and sinker around his head, he hurls it out into the surf, and, when he hooks a 
fish, puts the line over his shoulder and runs at full speed up the beach, hauling his 



The Standard Guide. 



9i 



fish high and dry after him. This mode may not partake of the high art of angling, 
but it is pursued with enthusiasm, and the worst that can be said about it is that to 
stand for hours up to one's hips in the ocean in March or April is conducive to rheu- 
matism. The bait for bass is shrimp, crab or mullet. Salt-water trout are caught in 
great abundance in the Matanzas and its tributary waters north of town; and in the 
St. Sebastian from the bridge and the wharves. They take the fly; baits used are 
shrimps and mullet. Drum fishing grounds are at Moultrie, five miles below town, 
and at certain localities known to the market fisherman in the North River. The 
drum fish is distinguished as a fish that can be fished for longer without a bite than 
any other game fish that swims. A writer in the Forest and Stream says that in view 
of the success of humbler fishermen than themselves the anglers of Beaufort, S. C, 
have adopted the comforting aphorism that "no gentleman can catch a drum." 

It was time for drumming, the magic hour between the fall of the ebb and the rise of the flood, 
for this delightful sport, whose praises and superior enchantments over all others in the Walton line I 
had so often heard spoken with such rapture by the mouth of a North Island and Beaufort man; the 
noble nature of the fish, his size and strength — the slow approach which he makes at first to the hook, 
like a crab, then the sudden overwhelming transport that comes over you when you feel him dashing 
boldly off with the line, threatening to drag you after him and upset your frail boat. How charming 
his resisting wait, comparable only to the intoxication and gentle rapture one experiences when pulling 
■along a lass through a Virginia reel. — " Sketch of Seminole War" (1836). 

Other varieties found here comprise blackfish, flounder, red snapper, black 
grouper, cavalli or crevalle, sailor's choice or hogfish, croaker, black grunt, skipjack 
or young bluefish, and jewfish which attain a weight of 200 and 300 lbs. The water 
vermin include sharks, catfish, garfish, angelfish, rays, or skates, toadfish and like 
horrible forms of creation. Some one or the other of them is sure to turn up on the 
end of a line cast for nobler fish; and the " patient angler" who manifests his patience 
in waiting for a bite is a very ordinary individual in comparison with the angelic being 
who can preserve his equanimity when a shark makes way with his tackle or his 
expectant gaze is greeted by the open countenance of a skate or a toadfish. 




THE SEA BASS OR CHANNEL BASS. 
From ll The Fishery Industries 0/ the United States." 



THE ST. AUGUSTINE TENNIS TOURNAMENT. 

TROPICAL CHAMPIONSHIP OF THE UNITED STATES. 

T*HE St. Augustine tennis tournament claims precedence a:, the first annual outdoor event of the tennis year. It is held 
- 1 - under the summer sky of St. Augustine on the second Tuesday in each March, while the North is still buried in win- 
ter. The event is for the St. Augustine Club's "Championship Trophy" representing the Tropical Championship of the 
United States. This title has been lodged with the Secretary of the National Association (of which the St. Augustine Club 
h a member) and is officially acknowledged by him. The Trophy is a massive sterling silver model of the ancient city 
gates. With pedestal, it is about 2oin. high by 24m. long, and is, perhaps, the handsomest tennis prize in the country. 
"Valuable enough for the National championship," says Mr. Ditson. It is a work of highest art, and a model of one or 
the country's most interesting historical monuments. It is winner's property after four victories, not necessarily consecu- 
tive. The All-comers 1 first prize is a silver pitcher of new and beautiful shape. It is winner's property after one victory. 
He then competes with the last year's champion for the Trophy. 

The first formal tournament held at St. Augustine, in March, 1886, on the private court of the Moorish Vilkt 
Zorayda, was an impromptu affair; and was won easily by T. S. Beckwith, of Cleveland. A second tournament was held 
in March, 18S7, entries including the Hon. Maxwell Scott, of Abbotsford, Scotland; Holland of New York; Peters of Phila- 
delphia; York of Cleveland; and Beckwith, who won. In 1S88 the occasion took on a new importance. Entries included. 
Garratt, Sellar and Block, of England; Lord Hope, brother of the Duke of Newcastle; L. Stewart, H. G. Trevor, C. 
Munn, Louis Webb, of New York; Burden, of Troy; Worthington and Beckwith, of Cleveland. Trevor, of New York, 
won both the Trophy and All-comers' cup, although Beckwith, who rose from his sick bed, gave him a good game. T he- 
latter was worthy of second prize, but was suddenly called North, and defaulted to Garratt of England, who easily won. 
second prize, Webb was eligible, but through misunderstanding defaulted. Trevor and Webb won the doubles. A grand 
ball followed in the superb dining hall of the Ponce de Leon, and was repeated afterward on the wooden tennis court, 
gorgeously decorated and illuminated for the occasion. During the tournament it was decided to offer the new and costly 
Trophy, which has raised the occasion to one of the most important events of the tennis world. 

The contest of March, 1889, drew together more experts of national reputation than had ever gathered in the country 
before at such an early date. The list was headed by Campbell, who held the first prke in doubles for the Championship 
of America, the New England Championship, the Inter-collegiate Championship, the second prize in singles in each of 
these three, besides numberless lesser prizes. A. C. Wright held first prize with Campbell in the Inter-collegiate Cham- 
pionship, and was champion of Trinity College. R. V. Beach held first prize in doubles of Yale College. A. E. Kennedy- 
was an expert from Princeton, while Deane Miller was a crack of the N. Y. Tennis Club, and had beaten Slocum, now- 
national champion. Naturally, the gathering was one of national interest, as it was the first test of merit of the seventeen, 
experts entered since the preceding season. Enthusiastic audiences surrounded the courts daily for a week, and witnessed 
the best tennis ever seen in the South. The contest for the handsome All-comers' cup between Campbell and Wright, 
in the finals, sho.ved the finest play of the contest, but Campbell won it handily, and next day easily defeated Trevor, 
holder of the silver trophy, and added "National Tropical Champion" to his list of titles. Wright won second prize, and 
later, with Campbell, the first prize in doubles for the Tropical Championship. 

Many prominent people enjoyed the sport daily, including Hon. H. S. Sanford, ex-minister to Belgium; Mrs. Senator 
Hearst, Mrs. Whitelaw Reid, Mme. Barrcda, Commodores Clark and Douglas, Mrs. John D. Jones, Miss Leiter, Miss 
Hope Goddard, Mrs. Franklin W. Smith, Miss Nina Smith, Senator Piatt, Miss Chisholm, of Savannah; Robert Garrett, 
and Hon. Geo. \V. Brown, the banker. A ball followed in the Ponce de Leon, for which speeial trains were run from, 
adjacent cities, and afterward the tennis men enjoyed baseball, dinners, yacht racing, dances, etc., and all returned North, 
enthusiastic over the unique pleasures of their visit to the ancient city and the attentions showered on them by residcr.t 
cottagers. 

No record would be complete which should fail to note that the success of this annual event has been due to the unre- 
mitting hard work and persistent exertions of one individual, Mr. George Stuart Smith, Secretary of the St. Augustine 
Club. From the fi*st conception of the prize to the happy termination of the last tournament, the actual work has been 
done by him singlc-hindcd. One who has not had personal experience in similar undertakings can hardly appreciate the 
difficult and trying nature of such a task, with its many details, perplexities and obstacles. By his unstinted labor and his. 
personal influence Mr. Smith has made the Tropical Championship tournament an occasion of importance in the tennis- 
world; and the results he has achieved are such as to render fitting this public recognition of his services. 

Entries for the tournament are received by the committee, R. D. Sears, Boston; Van Rensselaer Stuyvesant, New York; 
L. Harrison Dulles, Philadelphia; Geo. Stuart Smith, 336 Beacon street, Boston, Secretary, who should be addressed at 
St. Augustine during February and March. A vestibule car will convey a tennis party from New York, Boston and other 
Northern cities, to th : next 



The Savannah Line. 

Ocean Steamship Company of Savannah, 

AND 

New England & Savannah Steamship Company. 

For NEW YORK, 

BOSTON, 

PHILADELPHIA, 

AND ALL 

EASTERN POINTS. 




THE FLEET. 



Kansas City 4,000 tons. 

City of Augusta 3,000 tons. 

Tallahassee 3,000 tons. 

Chattahoochee 3,000 tons. 

Nacoochee 3,000 tons. 



City of Birmingham 3,000 tons. 

City of Savannah 2,100 tons. 

City of Macon 2,100 tons. 

Gate City 2,100 tons. 

Dessoug- 1,500 tons. 



LEAVE SAVANNAH 
For NEW YORK, . Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays. 

tfW Passengers for Philadelphia connect with Bound Brook Route. 

For BOSTON, ....... Every Four Days. 

For PHILADELPHIA (For Freight Only), . . Every Ten Days. 

Any Ticket Agent in Florida can sell through tickets and secure rooms on 
these steamers, or call or write to 



G. M. SORREL. General Manager, 

SAVANNAH, GA. 



C. G. ANDERSON, Agent, 

SAVANNAH, GA. 



Standard Guide Advertiser. 



The Plaza Drug Store. 



REMOVED TO LYON BUILDING. 

Corner St. George and King Streets. 



Cbnstitucton ! TfiE 0LDEST DRUG ST0RE IN THE 0LDEST CITY 

IN THE UNITED STATES. 



E. M. ALBA, M. D., St. Augustine, Fla. 

O. B. Smith. J. F. Cox. J. M. Thomas. 

W. LYON & CO., 

Wholesale Orocers, 



AND DEALERS IN 



Hardware, Crockery, Building Materials, Etc. 

LYON BUILDING, 
ST. AUGUSTINE, FLORIDA. 



Visitors to our City are respectfully invited to examine our 
buildine and our stock. 



Standard Guide Advertiser. 



otel Ponce de Leon. 



HOTEL ALCAZAR. 



HOTEL CORDOVA. 




t^ 



to 



O much has been written about St. Augustine, Florida, 
with its incomparable winter climate, and of the 
magnificent Ponce de Leon Hotel, with its every luxurious 

appointment, that the manage- 

W Z^J mc €de] ^ m - ment feel that the sim P le an - 

nouncement that the Ponce de 
Leon, Alcazar and Cordova will 
be thrown open for the recep- 
tion of guests about the ist day of January, 1890, 
will be quite sufficient. The Alcazar, an adjunct 
the Ponce de Leon, and a complete hotel in itself, 
contains swimming pools, Russian and Turkish baths, 
tropical gardens, tennis courts, casino, cafe, concert rooms 
and music (by Brook's well-known military band and 
orchestra of New York). Thus is af- 
forded every element for the dissipation 
of ennui and the perfect enjoyment of 
a most charming midwinter climate. 
It is with confidence, therefore, that we 
invite you to the luxuries of a palace — 
to the hospitalities of the Ponce de Leon. s @UH- 

Hotel Ponce de Leon, Hotel Alcazar, 

O. D. SEAVEY, Manager. 




HOTEL CORDOVA, E. N. Wilson, Manager. 

ST. AUGUSTINE, FLA. 



Standard Guide Advertiser. 




THE situation of this hotel is peculiarlv favorable, "being: midway between the old City Gates and the Plaza. It is con- 
venient to all points of interest. The season of i9g:> is the fourth under the present management. The sanitary 
arrangements, having been looked after minutely, are now the most perfect in the city. Everything* has been provided to 
meet every desire ani aid to the comfort of all who may favor us with their patronage, which is most respectfully solicited. 
The hotel has been provided, in all departments, with the best service obtainable, special care having been taken in the 
selection of experience'] and first-class cooks and assistants, and the Cuisine will be unexcelled, and maintained at all times 
at the highest s:?ndard of excellence. Terms for transient guests, $3.00 to $4.00 per day. A liberal reduction for parties 
desiring to engage rooms for the season. For further particulars address by mail or telegraph, 



St. Augustine, Fla. 



CHARLES F. BECK, Proprietor. 



Hernandez Hotel. 

CENTRALLY LOCATED. 
Charlotte St., 3 Minutes' Walk North of Plaza, Near Old Fort. 

NEWLY FITTED OUT FOR THE SEASON. 

COMFORTABLE AND HOMELIKE. 
Terms : $2.00 to $3.00 per Day, $8.00 to $15.00 per Week. 

MRS. J. V. HERNANDEZ, Prop. 

The Abbey. 

St. George Street, near City Gates, St. Augustine, Fla. 



FIRST-CLASS IN EVERY RESPECT. 

Bates, $10.00 to $14.00 per week. 
Also of Pierce Villa, Cottage City, Mass. MRS. A. B. ABBE. 



Standard Guide Advertiser. 



The Dairy Kitchen 

FROM THIS TIME FORTH WILL BE 

OPEN EVERY DAY IN THE YEAR. 




A SPECIALTY WILL BE MADE OF 

FIRST-CLASS REGULAR DINNERS, 

SERVED HOT FROM 12 TO 3 O'CLOCK FOR 50 CENTS. 



BREAKFAST AND SUPPER A LA CARTE. 

A LIBERAL REDUCTION FOR 

MEALS BY THE WEEK. 



*0OR PRICES ARE AS LOW AS GOOD FOOD WELL PREPARED WILL ALLOW. *- 



TABLES RESERVED FOR LADIES. 



THE DAIRY KITCHEN, 

St. George St., near Post Office, St. Augustine, Fla. 



Standard Guide Advertiser, 




A Magnificent Hotel. 



The Magnolia Hotel, 

ST. AUGUSTINE. 

Centrally Located Near Plaza and Post Office. 

W. W. PALMER, Proprietor. 



Rates, $3.00 to $4.00 per day. Special rates by the week. 



This hotel has just been rebuilt, enlarged and elegantly refitted. 

No expense has been spared, and it is the universal expression that it is now one 
of the finest hotels south of New York City. 

The building is in the Queen Anne style, and the space under its cover is over 
sixty-four thousand square feet, or nearly two acres. 



Standard Guide Advertiser. 

THE 

St. Augustine Route. 

The only line to 'St. Augustine, and the short, direct and best 
equipped to 

East Coast Line Resorts 

-*OF FLORIDA/- 

A new route via St. Augustine and Daytona to Halifax, 
Hillsboro and Indian River Landings, connecting at Daytona 
on and after January, 1890, with the new day steamer "St. Au- 
gustine," built by the Indian River Steamboat Company 

EXPRESSLY FOR THIS SERVICE. 



The new bridge over the St. Johns River at Jackson- 
ville obviates the necessity of transfer. 



Pullman Palace Cars between St. Augustine and Northern 
cities. Our own Parlor Cars on all day express trains. 

See large map of Florida in this Guide. 

For maps, books, souvenirs, schedules, etc., call on local agents, 
or apply to General Passenger Office. 

D, F, JACK, G, D, ACRERLY, 

General Manager. General Passenger Agent. 



Standard Guide Advertiser. 

GRAND* VIEW* HOTEL, 

JACKSONVILLE, FLA. 
FORSYTHE, BETWEEN CLAY AND BRIDGE STREETS. 

NEAREST HOTEL TO ALL DEPOTS. 
G. W. SMITH, Proprietor, Jacksonville, Fla. 

{Formerly Proprietor of the Tremont House}) 

Open Nov. i to May 15. Northern cooks only em- 
ployed. House put in perfect order throughout. Billiards, 
Pool Room and Ten-Pin Alley connected. The very best 
accommodations for the money in the South. 



**% Suwanee % Sulphur # Springs.^* 

" Way down upon the S'wanee River" 
SUWANEE, FLA. 

These celebrated Mineral Springs, resorted to for years and years, for their healing and 
medicinal virtues, by citizens of this and adjoining States,, when no conveniences were to be had save 
the log or bough hut, tents or cabins, have now been improved by the erection of two large coquina 
rock and brick hotel buildings, and a series of cottages, each cottage containing two rooms, with bath- 
room attached. Each room has hot and cold mineral water direct from the spring in the stationary 
toilet stands. 

The improvements are located in a park of live oak and long-leaf pines, ninety acres in extent, 
immediately on the banks of the far-famed river in song, "The Suwanee," with a sandy soil, on hi°-h 
ridge extending west to Tallahassee; and being equi-distant between Thomasville, Ga., and Jackson- 
ville, Fla. , with the salubrious climate so well known of the former and mild temperature of the latter, 
with absence of fogs or malaria, render it one of the most delightful climates in the State. 

The systern of water works and sewerage is perfect. _ In the main building are dining and 
breakfast rooms, kitchen, office, parlor, billiard and reading rooms, and suites of rooms on second^floor. 
Steam launch and rowboats on the river, livery attached to hotel, with saddle horses and vehicles of all 
descriptions, croquet and lawn tennis pavilion and dancing pavilion, afford amusement for the guests. 

This new and elegant Winter Resort and Sanitarium is now open for the reception of 
guests; and for completeness of detail, with due regard for the comfort and convenience of Tourist or 
Invalid, cannot be surpassed in the State. 
For sufferers from Rheumatism, Dyspepsia, Liver or Kidney complaints, these waters are without a rival. 

Rates for Winter 1SS9-90 : $15 per week, or $50 per month for single person. Special rate 
for families. Baths and attendance free. For descriptive pamphlet or particulars address 

L. W. SCOVILLE, General Manager, - Suwanee, Fla. 



Standard Guide Advertiser. 

The RICHMOND & DANVILLE R. R. 

(PIEDMONT AIR LINE) 

Is the Great Trunk Line Between the North and South. 

WITH magnificent double daily service. Through trains to Washington without break or transfer, 
and with equipment equalling the best in appliances for safety and comfort, for ease and luxury. 
Solid trains run through every day in the year, between Atlanta, Ga., and Washington, D. C, and 
splendid Pullman Yestibuled Palace Sleeping Cars between New Orleans and Washington and Bir- 
mingham and Washington. A through Pullman Palace Drawing Room Car runs from Atlanta to New 
York, without change, every day. 

All trains of the Richmond & Danville R. R. Co. arrive in and depart from the elegant Passenger 
Station of the Baltimore & Potomac Railroad Company in the city of Washington, conveniently situated 
near Pennsylvania Avenue, the great thoroughfare, and within easy access of all street railway lines. 

The beautiful region of Western North Carolina, the famous " Land of the Sky," offers the most 
attractive sojourn for the Winter and Spring, of any section of the South. A magnificent climate, 
unequalled scenery, fine transportation facilities, and elegantly appointed hotels, invite the tourist, 
invalid or pleasure-seeker, all alike, to the enjoyment of its unexcelled advantages for a Winter sojourn. 
As a resting point for returning Florida tourists, it offers unsurpassed inducements to spend that period 
which is too late in the season for Florida, and yet too early to encounter the treacherous changes of a 
Northern climate in the spring season. 

The attractions of the Richmond & Danville R. R. Line are, among others, a splendid roadway, 
the finest equipment, beautiful scenery, historic associations, eating-houses of national reputation for 
excellence, sure connections, reliable performance of schedules, courteous attendance and service. 
~~Secure all these by getting tickets reading over The Richmond 6° Danville R. R., 
The Leading Railway System of the South. 
SOL HAAS, Traffic Manager, JAS. L. TAYLOR, Gen, Passenger Agent, 

RICHMOND, VA. WASHINGTON, D. C. 

^\J-^ A Jr^'J ie ^ era ' 1 t Sei1 ^ i No. 92 West Bay St., Jacksonville, Fla. 
G. W. TAYLOR, Pass. Agent, I ' 

HOT SPRINGS, N. C, 

Has in luxurious and healthful combination, existing nowhere else, beautiful scenery; 
dry, bracing air; even temperature; Thermal Waters (which are an unequaled specific 
for rheumatism, gout, dyspepsia, malaria, nervous prostration, diseases of skin and 
blood, etc.) flowing into marble pools, the finest baths in America; and the Mountain 
Park Hotel, unexcelled in cuisine, comforts and sanitary conditions. 

It is in the heart of one of the but two regions marked on the U. S. Census Map 
as the localities where the natives are free from throat and lung diseases, and is the 
best place in the United States during autumn, winter and spring for bronchial or 
nary troubles. 



Dr. Louis A.-Sayre, 285 Fifth avenue. New York, says: " I arrived at Hot Springs unable to walk, 
suffering in all my joints from rheumatism, and was compelled to be wheeled around in a roller chair. 
After two weeks' bathing in these luxurious baths I was able to get on a horse, and have enjoyed the 
charming rides among these beautiful mountains. I shall always feel grateful for the immense benefit 
I have derived at this charming place." 

Henry V. Steers, Inspector of Police of New York, says: " I cannot speak too highly of the efficacy 
of the famous waters and salubrious climate of Hot Springs, K. C. Experience qualifies me to state 
that for sciatica and rheumatism those afflicted can find here speedy and permanent relief. I have re- 
turned a new man, and can recommend Hot Springs, N. C, to all hapless victims of rheumatic affections. " 
Through Parlor Cars from North, South and "West. 

W. G. DOOLITTLE, Manager. 

(Formerly Manager of Spring House, Richfield Springs, N. Y.\ 



Standard Giiide Advertiser, 



RI 



Go to DeLAND and LAKE HELEN, 

THE MOST DELIGHTFUL PLACES IN THE SOUTH. 

Why go to DeLAND and LAKE HELEN P 

We reply, because they are not only two of the most delightful places in Florida, birt are universally conceded to be 
among THE HEALTHIEST PLACES IN THE UNION! 

Impressions of DeLand. — My impression of DeLand on viewing it from the balcony of the Parceland Hotel, was 
that it was one of the prettiest cities in Florida. My conviction as I viewed it from the balcony on the third story of the 
University building, was that it was without exception THE PRETTIEST IN FLORIDA. Most Florida c' ' 
convey the impression under a bird's-eye view, that, like Topsy, "they just growed.'* DeLand shows every indicatic 
having been carefully planned, and developed in accordance with a preconceived design. It is a city of ample spaces, 
park-like stretches of the original pine forests and a vast area of orange grove within the city limits, Parceland Hotel has 
an orange grove on one side and an acre of lofty, heaven-kissing pines on the other. So it is with private residences. Most 
of them are either in the midst of orange groves, or situated on one side of the lot, with orange trees filling the remainder. 
From any commanding point the city looks like a vast orange plantation with a clustering town in the center, and houses 
dotted here and there amid the verdurous foliage.— C. H. Jones in letter, February, 1888, in Times-Union. 

LAKE HELEN, FLORIDA.— The uncommon beauty of the place caught the eye of wealthy visitors, and immedi- 
ately cottages began to spring up on the shores of Lake Helen. Queen Anne cottages, designed by Mace, the Ohio architect, 
and roomy, verandahed dwellings vie with each other in beauty. These are painted in delicate and pretty shades — grays, 
drabs, creams, etc.— with gables, towers, balconies and other features in keeping with their styles. In fact everything 
about Lake Helen is ornamental. Even the shops and stables are pretty enough to live in. 

HOTELS OF DeLAND AND LAKE HELEN, FLA.— DeLand has four and Lake Helen has two good home-like 
hotels, with tables good enough for the most fastidious taste, and at prices that will strike every one as very reasonable, 
besides a score or more of well-kept boarding houses. The hotel at Lake Helen, which Mr. DeLand has named the Harlan 
House (or Piney Woods Hotel of Florida), is as a whole elegant and complete, with absolutely everything in a style that 
must suit the most fastidious. 



Harlan Hotel, 

OR, 

Piney Woods Hotel of Florida. 

Enlarged and improved. Capacity doubled in 1886, and 
again in 1887. Elegant new furniture, electric bells, etc., 
tennis, croquet, billiards, boating, bowling alley, etc. 
Table supplied with the best of everything. Fresh vege- 
tables and berries from hotel garden every day. Milk in 
abundance. Lake Helen, Fla., is on the Atlantic & West- 
ern Railroad, eight miles from Blue Springs Landing on 
the St. Johns River. 

The Harlan Hotel, 

Lake Helen, Fla., 
Is located in a pine grove overlooking a beautiful lake. It 
has accommodations for over one hundred guests. It is 
new and modern. Conveniently arranged, and its sur- 
roundings are in the highest degree cheerful and pleasant. 
The climate here is celebrated for its evenness and 



HEALTHFULNESS. 

The Harlan was opened for its sixth season on 
880. Terms, $2 00 10 §2. to per day. 

'K. A. WYATT, M. 
H. A. DeLAND, Propkietok. 



The Granville. 

IS LOCATED IN 

The Garden Spot of Florida, 

Amid High Rolling Pine Lands on the Banks of beautiful 

LAKE HELEN. 

The house offers the best accommodations at from 

$7.00 to $10.00 PER WEEK, 

And for the price is the best in the State. 

TABLE FIRST CLASS. 

For further particulars address 

M. L. GRANVILLE, Proprietor, 

LAKE HELEN, FLORIDA. 



FLORIDA. 



DeLand and Lake Hi 
The most delightful pla 
Own a Home in one of them. You can purchase House 
and Lot, Orange Groves of any age or size. Tracts, 
Blocks and Lots of land near and in DeLand and Lake 
Helen on terms to suit you. For full particulars address 
H. A. DeLAND, DeLand, Fla. 

Make a choice investment 
OWN A HOME I 
Own an Orange Grove in Florida. Great Bargains at 
DeLand and Lake Helen, Florida, in Orange Groves all 
ages and sizes. Houses and Lots, and Blocks and Lots of 
land of all sizes, improved and unimproved. Terms to 
lit purchasers. Send for Florida papers, circulars and 
.all particulars to H. A. DeLAND. DeLand Fla. 



FLORIDA. 



1 Orange Gr 

1 HOMG 

Great Bargains at DeLand and Lake Helen. $25 pay- 
ments and upwards accepted. Terms to suit purchasers. 
For Florida weekly papers and circulars and full particu- 
lars address H. A. DeLAND, DeLand, Fla. 

All things considered, the C" I ADinA 
Best Bargains in Real Estate l 1— W I\ 1 U r\ ■ 

are at DeLand and Lake Helen. Houses, Lots and 
Orange Groves in DeLand. Blocks and Lots of Land of 
all sizes in DeLand. Orange Groves : all sizes and ages, 
in Lake Helen for sale. Terms to suit purchasers. Send 
for Florida papers and circulars to 

H. A. DeLAND, DeLand, Fla. 



Standard Guide Advertiser. 



The St. Augustine News Company, 

IN DAILY AND WEEKLY EDITIONS. 

TWO OF THE BEST ADVERTISING MEDIUMS IN THE SOUTH. 

ONLY DAILY PAPER IN ST. JOHNS CO. 



SUBSCRIPTION KATES: 
Daily (28 columns) per annum, 
Weekly (48 columns) per annum, 



$5.00 
S2.00 



FRED W. KETTLE, Editor. 



ST. AUGUSTINE NEWS CO. 



ST. ^VTJG-TISTIjNTE, FLA. 




FHILA. 



{J A WEEK 

•nC/ubSystem 

while as convenient 
to the buyer as any 
instalment system, is ( 
aixiholesale spot cash ^^. 
system to us. The Q 1 
co-operation off the f*\ 
club members sells us ^/w 
38 watches in each 
§3SWatch Clubhand we getcash from 
the Club for each watch before it goes 
out, though each, member only pays 
$1 a week. This is why wc give you 
more for your money than any one else 
and why we are doing the largest 
watch business in the world. We sell 
only first quality goods, but our 
iau.^i prices are about what otners eet fcr sec- 
ond quality. Our gao SiiverWiiftch 
substantial S'\[\'e.i:{>iot imitation of any k 
Stem-Wind American Lever Watch— eii 
hunting case or open. Our $23.00 Watcli 
is a Stem-wind, Open Face, first quality, 
stiffened GoldAmcncan LeverWatch^ar- 
teed to wear 20 ycais. Is fully equal to any 
watch sold forg 3 Sby others. \v& find a first- 
class Stiffened Gold Case m^ch more satis- 
factory and serviceable than any Solid Gold G 
that can be sold at less than double the money, 
as cheap solid cases are invariably thin, weak, of 
low quality, and worthless after short use. Our 
§38 WatcEl contains numerousimportant pat- 
cntedimprovements, of vital importance to ac- 
curate timing— Patent Dustpro-f, Patent Stent 
lVind,&*c. r which we control exclusively. It is 
fully equal for accuracy, appearance, durability 
and service, to any £75 Watch, either Open Face 
or Hunting. Our $43.00Railroad Watch. 
is especially constructed for the most exacting use 
and is the iiest RailroadWatch made,Open Face 
t>t Hunting. All these prices are either 
all cash or in clubs, Sl.OOaweek. 
An Anti-Pickpocket Swivel giv- 
67i Free •with each Watch. \ 

Anti-Pickpocket Swtvel&j^ 

Sentbymail postpaid on re- 
ceipt of price. The slightest pull 
at the chain fastens the concealed, 
points in the pocket. If your 
Watch is worth a dollar send for 
one, Satis/action guaranteed. 

Tfi8 Keystone Watch Ciub G 

n-ln Office In Co.'s Own Building, 
or,4 WALHUT ST., PHIIADA., PA. 




Standard Guide Advertiser. 



LYMAN'S 

NEW 

Wind-Gauge big 

A REAR SIGHT 

FOR 

Hunting and Target Rifles 




Send for 96-page catalogue of 
Sights and Rifles. 



Address 

WILLIAM LYMAN 



LYMAN'S 

Spirit Level. 

For Hunting and 
Target Rifles. 



Standard Thermometer. 



The Most Useful and 
Ornamental Thermom- 
eter made. 

Endorsed by scientists 
and the Signal Service. 



For Sale ky the Trade Everywhere. 




Adopted by the Penn- 
sylvania, Boston & Al- 
bany, Northern Pacific; 
Fitchburg and other rail- 
roads. Particularly use- 
ful in homes, and quite 
as necessary as the clock. 



Made in 4. 6 and Sin. Dials. Price, $2.50. 



For circulars apply to 

STANDARD THERMOMETER COMPANY, 

PEABODY, MASS. 



Standard Gziidc Advertiser. 



The Lefever Arms Co., 



SYRACUSE, N. Y. 




Any Gauge or Weight. Price $80 to $350. 



The best balanced, most symmetrical and strongest gun in 
the world. Has an unexcelled record for pattern and penetration. 
Compensated action to take up wear in every direction. Used 
by the leading trap shots in America, and has received the 
highest commendation from sportsmen and mechanical experts. 

Send for Illustrated Catalogue. List of shop-worn and 
second-hand guns sent on application. 



The Lefever Arms Company, 



SYRACUSE. N. Y. 



Standard Guide Advertiser. 

BROTHERS OF THE ANGLE: 

The New Two-Joint "Little Giant" Bass Rod 
designed by Dr. Henshall, and recommended by 
him for Florida waters, is what all Florida anglers 
want. 

Chubb's New Catalogue for lSgo is now ready. In addition 
to a complete list of anglers' supplies, it contains articles from 
the pens of Dr. James A. Henshall, "Petronella," W. H. H. 
Murray, Geo. P. Goff, "Norman," Brother Gardner and others. 
Send 25 cents and receive catalogue postpaid. This amount 
will be deducted from first order (if accompanied with coupon 
in book) for one dollar's worth or more of our goods. 



Address THOS. H. CHUBB, 

The Fishing Rod Manufacturer, 

POST MILLS, VT. 

Mention the ^Standard Guide.''' 




Margaret Deland's Florida Days. 

Florida Days. By Margaret Deland, author of "John Ward, Preacher," "The Old Garden, and 
Other Verses," etc. With sixty-five illustrations from sketches made expressly for the work, in St. 
Augustine and other parts of Florida, by Louis K. Harlow, including four fac-similes of water color 
drawings, two etchings, eleven full-page plates, and forty-eight illustrations in the text. 8vo., cloth, 
extra, gilt top, $4.00. 

Those who have breathed the strange and lovely atmosphere which broods over gray St. Augustine, and holds one 
enchanted by the wide St. John's, will find with delight their nebulous and unspoken fancies given voice — a lovely voice, 
like a song — in the pages of "Florida Days." . . . Something of the unspeakable light of Southern suns has been 
caught by artist's magic and fixed upon the page. No more exquisite volume has ever been offered at any season to those 
who value all that goes to the making of a perfect book. — Boston Transcript. 

SENT POSTPAID ON RECEIPT OF PRICE. 

LITTLE, BROWN & CO., Publishers, 254 Washington St., Boston. 

■* HOWARD # HOUSE.*- 

Opposite Union Depot, Washington, D. C. 

JOHN B. SCOTT, PROPRIETOR. 

TERMS: $2.50 PER DAY. 



HHP2 price of the Standard Guide, wherever sold, is 
25 cents. Sent postpaid on receipt of price by the 
publishers. The Guide is published annually. It is the 
best advertising medium is Florida. Proprietors and pub- 
lishers: E. H. Reynolds, St. Augustine; C. B. Reynolds, 
318 Broadway, New York. 



Standard Guide Advertiser. 



OLD ST. AUGUSTINE; 

A STORY OF THREE CENTURIES. 



By CHAS. B. REYNOLDS. 

itorical in the best and truest sense, for^ its pen- 

ng personages, the actors in the town's event: 
witn stirring incident. 1 he story is told m briefest possible compass, and with most caret ui regard tor accuracy, due noi 
the less with spirit and enthusiasm. Published by E. H. REYNOLDS, St. Augustine, Fla. For sale at all book stores. 



AN adequate historical sketch — historical in the best and truest sense, for^ its pen-pictures vividly portray the scenes of 
former days, and recall, as living personages, the actors in the town's eventful past The chapters are crowded 
with stirring incident. The story is told in briefest possible compass, and with most careful regard for accuracy, but r 



Some of the Golden Opinions "Old St. Augustine" has won. 

BOSTON EVENING TRANSCRIPT. - The object of this book is, as the author tells us in the preface, "to show 
the St. Augustine of the present, tinged and illumined with the light of the past." In this design Mr. Reynolds has suc- 
ceeded admirably. The ancient city has been so belettered and befogged by superficial and ill-informed tourists, that its 
true history has been almost lost sight of- a history more varied and romantic than that of any other American city. Mr. 
Reynolds has produced by far the best book that has appeared on the subject; and now for the first time one can under- 
stand the story from its beginning. 

LITERARY WORLD. -This little monograph is evidently a labor of love, and the author has every reason to be 
proud of his work, which is in all respects, from the '"make up," arrangement of subjects, choice of pictures and plans, and 
style, deserving of high praise. And as no city in North America has experienced more violent changes, or passed through 
the hands of a greater variety of masters and invaders, the result of Mr. Reynolds'sarrangement is a series of tragic scenes 
almost without parallel. The history of the colony of Minorcans is one of absorbing interest almost akin to that with which 
romance and poetry have invested the Acadians. The great wrongs done to that inoffensive people are hardly known to 
the Dresent generation. . . . Another graphic chapter in which the author's sympathies are warmly enlisted is that on 
the Seminoles. 

NEW YORK OBSERVER. —A very agreeable volume, beautifully illustrated. Mr. Reynolds has improved unusual 
opportunities for the preparation of an historical monograph on one of the most interesting as well as ancient settlements 
on this continent. It is history with all the charm of story, and ought to be familiar to every one who has any interest in 
the past of his native land. Mr. Reynolds's chapters are faithful and pleasing pictures in the panorama of events which 
have given an element of romance to Florida during three centuries. 



THE NATION.— It is hardly necessary to have seen the quaint old town of which Mr. Reynolds writes, to feel 
interested in his narrative of its "changing fortunes" — "unstable as the shifting sands of its harbor bar." 

NEW YORK EVENING POST.-A series of well selected historic pictures, on which he has succeeded in throwing 
a strong light. 

-The intending tourist will do well to purchase this book and stow it in a corner of his satchel, for 
it will repay perusal. 

BOSTON JOURNAL.— As interesting as a romance. 

WASHINGTON POST.— Reads with the interest of a novel, although he has never sought for the romantic to the 
exclusion of the facts of history, and his interesting work is always historically accurate. The author possesses a clear and 
direct style, often picturesque, sometimes quaintly humorous, and always readable. The photographic reprod 
among the best specimens of this work we have ever seen. 

CHRISTIAN INTELLIGENCER.— This is a history of adventure and of conquest, possessing all the charm of the 

The 



t exciting romance. By the first sweep of his pen the author captivates his readers. . . . The most thrilling his- 
torical incidents are skillfully grouped, and so vividly portrayed, that as one reads, he sees the actors come and go in quick 
succession as in a well-played drama. The reader's soul is 
recital. . . ._ Tourists especially should not miss r. 
knowledge of which will greatly add to the zest of their pie; 

SPRINGFIELD REPUBLICAN.— A history which reads like a romance from beginning to end. Mr. Reynolds is 
not sparing of his rhetoric, but the stirring events connected with the early history of this most ancient city of the United 
States warrant a departure, perhaps, from the more prosaic style of historic narrative. Seizing upon the most striking 
episodes of the city's history, he elaborates them in separate chapters which are vivid specimens of the pen-picturing art. 

PHILADELPHIA PRESS.— A delightful running account of the romantic town. No place in America has a more 
eventful history. 

NEW YORK TIMES— In an exceedingly pleasing volume Mr. Chas. B. Reynolds tells the history of an old Florida 
town, whose story is one tinged with peculiar romance. . . . With exceeding accuracy gives all the historical facts, 
bringim? down the curious story to to-day. The subject is so full of interest that the author's pages are all aglow with 
" ; lights. 



MAGAZINE OF AMERICAN HISTORY.— Prepared with skill and excellent tas 
able record, written with care and accuracy, and deserving of the highest praise. 

CHRISTIAN UNION.- The history of the quaint old own has been a varied and « 
its picturesqueness in Mr. Reynolds's graphic i 



SUNDAY SCHOOL TIMES.— Among all the booklets which have been written concerning the old Florida seaport, 
none is worthier of its subject than "Old St. Augustine." . . . Mr. Reynolds delineates in a clear and graphic way the 
shifting panorama of St. Augustine's history, and he has succeeded in writing a little volume which is full of light, shade 
and color, and one which will be welcomed as an adequate memento. 

BOSTON DAILY ADVERTISER.— A picturesque and dramat'c story of three centuries of battle and change. 

INDEPENDENT.— fells the story with eminent care, brevity and precision. 



Standard Guide Advertiser. 



Odor of Forest ! Sparkle of Stream 




The Forest and Stream is of particular interest 

to Southern tourists; it has frequent accounts of travel and sport in Florida, with 
intelligent and valuable papers on the health resorts of the State; see for instance 
the article by Dr. H. Caruthers quoted in the Standard Guide. The issue of 
Jan. 9, 1889, is 

A Special Florida Number Illustrated 

With portraits of the game fish of Florida waters, and accounts of holidays with them. 

This number is on sale at the news stands, price 10 cents. 

_ o -x/ c _ 

The Forest and Stream believes in the recreation to be found in the haunts of 
deer and grouse, and trout and bass. It believes in the common sense that calls a 
halt in business drive and professional grind for a holiday with gun, and rod, and 
paddle — if only afterward to drive the faster and grind the harder. It is a journal 
for those who love the country and life out-of-doors. It reflects the spirit and records 
the experiences of the great army of outers. If you have any sympathy with these 
things, the Forest and Stream is just the paper you would like to have come into your 
home every week. Its columns are fresh, clean, bright, entertaining. It is a journal 
for the family, though primarily intended for men — young and old — who shoot or 
fish, or sail, or row, or study the way of furred and feathered life. 

Weekly, 28 pages, $4 per year; single numbers, 10 cents. Address 

FOREST AND STREAM PUB. CO., 318 Broadway, N. Y. 

^ * 4? 

<>jV ^2w ^ov 

We are the largest publishers in America of books on Outdoor Sport. Send for 
free illustrated catalogue of our books on Angling, Shooting, Hunting, Camp Life, 
Yachting, Canoeing, Travel, Adventure. 



Standard Guide Advertiser. 

E. D. SABIN & CO., 



WHOLESALE AND RETAIL 



Dry Goods, Carpets, Ladies' and Gentlemen's 
Furnishing Goods. 

READY MADE CLOTHING, HATS AND CAPS. 

Full Line Ladies' and Gentlemen's Fine Boots and Shoes. 

LADIES' and MISSES' WRAPS and GARMENTS. 

Special Departments — Millinery and Custom Tailoring. 



In every department we have the largest stock in the city to select from, and our prices will be 
found right every time. We treat all alike, having one price and that the lowest. Call at our house 
and you will receive prompt and polite attention. 

E. D. SABIN & CO., 

Nos. i and 2 Vail Block, two Doors from Old Cathedral. 



GO TO 

G. T. BUNTINGS 

FOR YOUR 

Furniture, Mattresses, Pillows, 

PICTURE FRAMES, MOULDINGS BRACKETS, WINDOW SHADES 
AND FANCY CABINET WARE. 

(N. B. — Undertaking Department entirely separate.) 
™^hone : No. 45 i\orth Charlotte Street, 

Store, No. 3 

Residence, No. 33. St. Augustine, Fla. 



Standard Guide Advertiser. 



The Clyde Steamship Co. 

"New York, Charleston and Florida Lines." 

"ST. JOHNS RIVER DE BARY LINE." 




Steamers are appointed to sail from Pier 29, East River, N. V., at 3 P. M., as follows: 

For JACKSONVILLE, Fla., . . Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. 
For CHARLESTON, S. C, . . Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. 

NORTHBOUND. 

Steamers are appointed to sail as per schedule in local papers. 

From JACKSONVILLE, Fla., . . Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. 
From CHARLESTON, S. C, . . Mondays, AVednesdays and Fridays. 

For hour of sailing see Jacksonville and Charleston daily papers. 



The fleet is composed of the following elegant steamers: 

"IROQUOIS" (New), Capt. L. W. Pennington. 

"CHEROKEE," Capt. H. A. Bearse. 

"SEMINOLE," Capt. S. C. Piatt. 
"YEMASSEE," Capt. Joseph McKee. 

"DELAWARE," Capt. I. K. Chichester. 

This is the only line of steamers running through to JACKSONVILLE, Fla. 
without change. 

For further information apply to 

WM. P. CLYDE & CO., General Agents. 

12 SOUTH WHARVES, 5 BOWLING GREEN, 

PHILADELPHIA. NEW YORK. 

THEO. G. EGEE, Traffic Manager, - No. 5 Bowling Green, New York. 



Standard Guide Advertiser. 




The Best Life Insurance. 



OUR Twenty-Payment Combined Life and Endowment Policy with 
guarantee of legal cash value at the end of second or any succeed- 
ing year gives you the best protection for life at a low premium, and 
besides furnishes a HANDSOME ENDOWMENT FUND, if 
you wish to retire at the end of twenty years (or before that period if 
necessary). No society or co-operative insurance approaches it for 
cheapness. It will pay you to examine its merits. 

Example: Age, 35. $10,000. Premiums, $342.00. 

Total premiums in twenty years, ...... $6,840.00 

Legal cash value at end of twenty years, ..... 5,264.90 

Cost of twenty years of insurance, ...... $1,575.10 

Average cost per year for each §1,000, ...... 7.87 

This would be the average annual cost if there were no dividends. 

A moderate estimate for dividends on this kind of policy would nearly if not quite extinguish the 
cost should the insured call for the cash value at the end of twenty years and retire. 

The Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company (Incorparated in 1851) issues all 
kinds of life policies and endowment bonds. Its contract is simple, liberal and definite. 

Send me age and address for guaranteed values at your age. 

GILFORD MORSE, Manager, 

243 BROADWAY, NEW YORK. 

WORCESTER'S DICTIONARY 

^THE STANDARD.* 

The New Edition includes a Dictionary that contains thousands of words not to be found in 
any other Dictionary, a Pronouncing Biographical Dictionary of over 12,000 

personages, a Pronouncing Gazetteer Of the World, noting and locating over 
20,000 places, a Dictionary Of Synonymes, containing over 5,000 words in general 

use, also over 12,500 new words, recently added. All in one volume. 

Illustrated with Wood Cuts and Full-Page Plates. 
In the face of the most bitter opposition, Worcester's Dictionary has won its way solely upon its 
merit, until it is now recognized as "by ear the best authority as to the present use of the 
English language." THE NATIONAL STANDARD OF AMERICAN LITERA- 
TURE. Every edition of Longfellow, Holmes, Bryant, Irving, Whittier, and other eminent American 
authors, follows Worcester "It presents the usage of all great English writers." Many publishing 
houses, which for a time adopted a rival work, have now gone over to Worcester. The same is 
true of the leading magazines and newspapers. The Harper's Magazine, Weekly, New York 
Tribune, Herald, Times, World, Post, Sun, Independent, Nation; the Boston Advertiser, Transcript, 
Herald, Globe; Philadelphia Ledger, and other leading papers all over the country, now use the word- 
forms presented by Worcester. It presents the accepted usage of our best public speakers, and has 
been regarded as the standard by our leading orators — Everett, Sumner, Phillips, Garfield, Hillard 
and others. Most clergymen and lawyers use Worcester as authority on pronunciation. Worcester's 
Dictionaries have been largely used in the common schools since their publication. Every year 
brings an extended field and an increased sale. They have been recommended by State Superintend- 
ents of Education and adopted by State Boards. All the leading cities of the country have authorized 
their use, among which are Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Brooklyn, Chicago, Washington, St. Louis, 
Cambridge, Worcester, etc. FOR SALE BY ALL BOOKSELLERS. 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY, Publishers, 

715 and 717 MARKET STREET, PHILADELPHIA. 



Standard Guide Advertiser. 

STEINWAY 

PIANOFORTES. 




The Standard Pianos of 
the World 

ARE USED AND PREFERRED BY ALL 

Leading Artists. 

Steinway & Sons are the only Manufacturers who make all component parts of their Pianofortes, 

exterior and interior (including the casting of the full steel frames), in their own factories. 

ILLUSTRATED CATALOGUE MAILED FREE ON APPLICATION. 

STEINWAY & SONS, 

WAREROOMS, STEINWAY HALL, 

Nos. 107, 109 and 111 East Fourteenth Street, New York. 



smith & woodman, 
Chemists and Druggists. 

Largest and Finest Retail Drug Store in the South. Manufacturers of Smith's Headache Powders, 

a cure warranted or money refunded. Agents for Poland Mineral Water. The only place 

in the city where complete assortment of Homeopathic Remedies can be found. 

ALL PRESCRIPTIONS FILLED OR CHECKED OFF BY A COLLEGE GRADUATE. 

Night Bell. King Street, Cordova Block, St. Augustine, Fla. 

S. B. & G. H. MANCE, 

Contractors ■*■ and * Builders. 

OFFICE IN LYON'S BUILDING, ST. AUGUSTINE, FLA. 

Plans and Specifications Furnished. Builders of Magnolia Hotel, Lyon Building, Hotel Cordova, 

Hotel Bella Vista, The Pompeii, Hotel Ormond, on Halifax River. 

DR. E. M. GOODRICH, 
Northern Dentist of Twenty-five Years Experience, 

Office and Residence, North St. George Street, 
near the city gates. 



Standard Guide Advertise: 



^yg*^ 




€@WBii©KnrE®. 



^CELEBRATED*HATS» 



LADIES' ROUND HATS AND BONNETS 

—AND— 

THE DUNLAP SILK UMBRELLA. 



178 & 180 Fifth Av., bet. 22d & 23d sts., and 181 Broadway, near Cortlandt St., New York. 
Palmer House, Chicago ; 914 Chestnut st., Philadelphia. 



Gold Medal Awarded. Paris Exposition. 1889. 



Agencies in all Principal Cities, 



ROBERTS & FELLOWS, 

(Successors to EDW. L. WILSON) 

PUBLISHERS OF 

ORIENTAL AND AMERICAN 

PHOTOGRAPHS 




-Manufacturers and Dealers i 



PHOTOGRAPHIC TRANSPARENCIES 

FOR THE OPTICAL LANTERN. 

AGENTS FOR THE 

McIKTTOSH 

Stereopticons, Sciopticons and Microscopes. 

Coloring LANTE RN-SLID ES a Specialty. 

Send three cents for our Illustrated Catalogue. 

i3o5 ARCH STREET, - PHILADELPHIA, PA. 

Notice. — Negative Retouching, Slide Making and Silver Printing for the Trade and Amateurs. 
SEND FOR PRICE LIST. 



FOR READY REFERENCE. 



RAILWAYS. Jacksonville, St. Augustine & Halifax River Railway, to Jacksonville; St. John's Division, to Tocoi 
and river steamboats ; Palatka Division, to Palatka. Conveyance from depot to any part of town, 25 cents ; baggage, 25 
cents per piece. 

HOTELS. Alcazar, on the Alameda. Cordova, on the Alameda. Florida House, Treasury and St. George streets. 
Magnolia, St. George street. Ponce de Leon, on the Alameda. San Marco, Shell Road. Hernandez Hotel, Charlotte 
street. Boarding house — The Abbey. 

MAILS. Post office on St. George street, facing Plaza. General delivery, 8 A. M. to 5:30 P. M. Mail time between 
St. Augustine and New York, 36 hours; Boston, 36 hours; Chicago, 75 hours. For arrival and departure of mails see 
schedule posted in office. 

TELEGRAPH OFFICES. Alcazar, Hotel Ponce de Leon and Hotel San Marco. Rates for 10 words, Jacksonville, 
25 cents, New York or Chicago, 60 cents. 

EXPRESS. Southern Express Co.; office, Nos. 34 and 36 Alcazar, Cordova street, open 7 A. M. to 8 P. M. 

RANK. First National Bank, north side of Plaza. Hours, 9:30 A. M. to 2 P. M. 

CHURCHES. Baptist— Ancient City Baptist, Y. M. C. A. Hall, Lyon Block. Services: Sabbath, 11 A. M. and 
7:30 P. M., Sunday school at 9:30 A. M. Prayer meeting, Thursday at 7:30 P. M. Rev. H. M. King. 

Episcopalian— Trinity Church, facing Plaza on the south. Services: Sabbath, 10:30 A. M., 7:50 P. M. Sabbath 
school, 3:30 P. M. For other services see bulletin on front of church. Rev. \V. L. Githens. 

Methodist— Grace Church, Cordova and Carrere streets. Services: Sabbath, n A. M., 7:30 P. M. Sunday school, 
9 A. M. Class meeting, 11:45 A. M. Young people's prayer meeting, 6:30 P. M. Wednesday, prayer meeting, 7:30 P. M. 
Rev. T. M. House; parsonage adjoining church. 

Presbyterian — St. George street, near Bridge street. Services: Sabbath, 10:30 A. M., 7:30 P. M. Sunday school, 
- P. M. Wednesday, prayer meeting, 7:30 P. M. Rev. Edwin K. Mitchell; residence, St. George street, north of 
Magnolia Hotel. 

Roman Catholic— Church facing Plaza on the north. Services: Sabbath, 6, 8:30 and 10:30 A. M., 4 P. M. 
Rt. Rev. Bishop Moore; residence, St. George street and Plaza. 

Y. M. C. A.— Ward G. Foster, Pres. Rooms in Lyon Block, corner St. George street and Alameda. Sabbath, praise 
meeting, 4 to 5 P. M. Rooms open daily 8 A. M. to 9 P. M. 

FORT MARION is open to the public through the day, until sunset gun. 

BOATS. Small steam craft ply between wharves and beaches (trip 25 cents) and other points; and may be chartered 
f»r excursions. Sailing boats with skipper, 50 cents to $1 per hour, $2 to $5 per day. Rowboats for hire by the hour or day. 

OPERA HOUSE (Genovar's) — St. George street, between Treasury and Hypolita streets. 

PUBLIC LIBRARY. St. George street, in post office building. Non-residents borrow books free of charge, on 
deposit of $2. 

STUDIOS. Valencia street, Hotel Ponce de Leon. No. 1, George W. Seavey. No. 2, F. H. Shapleigh. No. 3. W. 
Staples Drown. No. 4, R°bt. S. German. No. 7, M. J. Heade. 

MUSEUM. The collections of the St. Augustine Institute of Natural Science, No. 27 Alcazar court, are open to the 
public daily from 2 to 5 and 7 to 9 P. M„ admission free. 

YACHT CLUB. St. Augustine Yacht Club; Com., E. A. Douglass, of New York. Clubhouse, Sea-wall and Central 
Wharf. 

DATES. Ponce de Leon discovers Florida, 1512. Menendez founds St. Augustine, 1565. Drake, 1586- Boucaniers, 
1665 Moore of Carolina, 1702. Oglethorpe of Georgia, 1740. Florida becomes a British possession, 1763. Retroceded to 
Spain, 1783. Acquired by the United States, 1821. Seminole war, 1835-42. 



Standard Guide Advertiser. 



New rCodak C^ameras. 



-■£> 



" You press the button, 

we do the rest." 

Seven New Styles and Sizes 

ALL LOADED WITH 

Transparent Films. 

ftSp" For Sale by all Photo. Stock Dealers. Send for Catalogue, 

THE EASTMAN COMPANY, Rochester, N. Y. 

Philadelphia Fishing Tackle House. 




— MANUFACTURERS OF 



FINE FIS HING TACKLE. 

OUTFITS FOR FLORIDA, OUR SPECIALTY. 



Florida Rods and Reels for Tarpon, Channel Bass, etc. 

Two- Joint, German Silver Mounted, with Agate Tip End and with Celluloid Butt, all hand- 
made and warranted, of Bethabara Wood, which is stronger and more elastic than Split 

Bamboo, each $10.00 

Hexagonal Split Bamboo, with Double Enamel of Twelve Strips, making a solid all-enamel 

rod, each 16.60 

These Double Enamel Split Bamboo Rods are made entirely of the enamel of the bamboo, which is the strength and 
life of the rod, the pith of each strip being all cut away, an extra piece of the solid enamel taking its place, and all the strips 
are firmly cemented together, making the strongest rod of the kind known. 

We would also call special attention to our HooliS, made especially for Florida Fishing, as also 
to our 600ft. "Best" Bass Line of 12, 15, iS and 21 thread, plain, each $3.00, and the same water- 
proofed by our Improved Paraffine Process, each $5.00. All copper Bait Kettles, 12 quarts, each $6.00. 

Illustrated Price List of 90 pages sent by mail upon receipt of ten cents in stamps. 

A. B. SHIPLEY & SON, 503 Commerce St., Philadelphia. 



Standard Guide Advertiser. 

F. W. DEVOE & CO., 

FULTON STREET, Cor. WILLIAM, NEW YORK. 

(Established 1852.) 

MANUFACTURERS OF 



A 




RTISTS' MATERIALS. 



F. W. D. & CO.'S TUBE COLORS. 

F. W. D. & CO.'S CANVAS. 

F. W. D. & CO.'S FINE BRUSHES. 



F. W. DEVOE & CO., in l8S8, sold more Artists' Tube Colors of their owti manufacture than were 
imported into the United States from all sources during that time. 



Our Manufactures are used by and command the confidence of the leading artists of the country. 
A list of those endorsing our goods sent on application. 



Cr-ayon, Sculptors and Etching Materials. 

Draiving Papers, Mathematical Instruments. 
WHITE LEAD, COLORS, VARNISHES. 

Artists' Materials of F. W. Devoe & Co.'s manufacture can be had of all first-class dealers throughout the United States. 
F. W. DEVOE. J. F. DRUMMOND. J. SEAVER PAGE. 




(fy&ntw. 



HOTEL CORDOVA. 

(Under the Arch by the Round Tower.) 



J^HE BOOK OF THE PONCE DE LEON. * • 

* * We take pleasure in announcing that we have in 
preparation, to be published under this title, a superb and 
sumptuous volume, picturing the architectural beauties of 
the new St. Augustine. This work has been undertaken on 
a liberal scale at a large outlay, and with the controlling 
purpose of producing a volume, which in dignity and ele- 
gance shall be in keeping with the subjects to which it 
relates. To this end we have chosen the artotype process 
of illustration, which, by reason of its photographic fidelity 
and the richness of effect secured by it, is recognized as 
embodying the highest perfection of illustrative art of the 
day. The artotypes will be by Edward Bierstadt, of 
New York, the well-known pioneer and leader in this art 
process, whose work has won a world-wide reputation. 
The plates will be made from original photographic nega- 
tives, taken expressly and exclusively for our use by 
a photographer sent from New York for this purpose. They 
will number between fifty and sixty. The subjects will 
include the Hotels Ponce de Leon, Alcazar and Cordova, 
and the new church edifices, with interior and exterior 
views of each, and its surroundings, together with a series 
of carefully chosen views of St. Augustine and its historic 
monuments. The volume will be an imperial quarto, size 
of page 11x14 inches, richly bound, with an unique cover. 
In undertaking and carrying forward to completion an enter- 
prise of this magnitude, the publishers have confidence that 
they will receive the recognition of those who can appreciate 
the superior merits of the work and its unusual character, 
and who will accord to it a cordial support. 

The Book of the Ponce de Leon will be sold by sub- 
scription, and will be ready in the autumn of 1890. Price 
$15.00. For a full list of the plates, date of publication and 
subscription forms, address the publishers, E. H. Reynolds, 
St. Augustine; C. B. Reynolds, 318 Broadway, New York. 



vfc ■ ■ -— - - ^- - - ■ — >- — fi — ^^ " •■■-^~ - ■ ■ ■ ^ 

DECKER 

BROTHERS' ** ■ ■ 

GRAND, 

UPRIGHT 

and SQUARE 

PIANOS. 

Highest Grade Instruments Manufactured. 
Perfect and Reliable in Every Respect. 
The Choicest Known. 

UNION SQUARE, NEW YORK. 

REAL ESTATE 

FOR SALE. 
LOANS NEGOTIATED AND INVESTMENTS MADE. 

Rents Collected and Taxes Paid for Non-Residents. Buildings of all kinds furnished 
complete by contract or on commission. 

PLANS AND SPECIFICATIONS PROMPTLY FURNISHED. 




St. Augustine Improvement Co., 

ST. AUGUSTINE, FLA. 

OFFICE, WAREHOUSES AND SHOPS ON KING STREET, NEAR UNION DEPOT. 

(P. O. Boer 606.) 
HETH CANTCELD, ( W. G. WAR DEN . 

President and Manager. _„ \ HETH CANFIELD. 



E. H. REYNOLDS, Directors : ■< JOHN B- WARDEN. 

Secretary and Treasurer. ( E. H. REYNOLDS. 

OAFZTAXi stogie:. $100,000. 



a L. SCHEMBER, PRINTER, OS NASSAU STREET. NEW YORK. 



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